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THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 





tie ENCYCLOPAEDIA 
OF FURNITURE 


AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF FURNITURE 
DESIGN IN EGYPT, ASSYRIA, PERSIA, 
GR owOME, TrALY, FRANCE, THE 
NETHERLANDS, GERMANY, ENGLAND, 
SCANDINAVIA, SPAIN, RUSSA, AND IN 
DTHESNEAR AND FAR EAST UP TO THE 
MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
WITH 659 ILLUSTRATIONS ARRANGED 
ON 320 PLATES 


COMPILED 
BY AUTHORITIES 
IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES 
UNDER THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF 


DR. HERMANN SCHMITZ 


OF THE SCHLOSS MUSEUM, BERLIN 
AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 


H. P. SHAPLAND 


EDITOR OF “THE CABINET MAKER” 


E. WEYHE, 794 LEXINGTON AVE. NEW YORK 


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INTRODUCTION 


THE Encyclopaedia of Furniture has been compiled in order to set down as a brief, clear and 
continuous illustrated narrative the whole history of furniture. Students of various branches of 
knowledge have of late years become accustomed fo this method of treatment, to the catholic 
rather than the parochial outlook on the subjects in which they are more particularly interested. 
We have had Mr. H. G. Wells’ Outline of History, a masterpiece which set all the world thinking; 
this was followed by an Outline of Literature and Art, an Outline of Science, and now by a com- 
parable work, The Encyclopaedia of Furniture, which is in fact an outline of the history of the subject 
from the days of the Pharaohs to the middle of the 19th century A.D. 

An idea which is gaining currency is that not only the teaching of history in general, but the teach- 
ing of particular subjects has been restricted within too narrow limits. The Frenchman, for example, 
with his intense interest in the arts, studies the history of craftsmanship in his own country and 
thoroughly masters his theme only to discover that the variations of the Italian manner found in 
the Germanic countries—in Belgium, Holland, England or Scandinavia—each provide a starting- 
point for equally extensive courses of study. No wonder that the student is appalled by the task 
confronting him. Though he may have the will and energy he soon finds himself immersed in 
the practical affairs of life, and opportunity is lacking for an equally thorough and systematic study 
of the detailed histories of furniture in other countries. There are quite definite limits of time 
and energy set to the studies of the ordinary man or woman. On the other hand, while it is 
desirable for the connoisseur, the collector, the student and the craftsman to know everything 
about one phase of his subject, it is equally desirable that he should know something about every 
other phase: this is precisely the knowledge which the author of The Encyclopaedia of Furniture 
marshals for his readers. Following the subject not so much in respect of its intricate details, 
but in broad outline, the reader inevitably gains the impression that the history of furniture is 
one and indivisible, and that it is impossible to understand the subtle changes which took 
place in design in any one country without a due appreciation of what was happening in adjacent 
lands. A just estimate of the play and interplay of the various influences which affected furniture 
design is at last made possible for the reader who surveys the whole field—foreground, middle 
distances and far horizons in company with the author of this work. The specialized history of 
the furniture of any one country concerns itself with dates and styles and a wealth of local 
colour. This Encyclopaedia deals with ages and centuries rather than with decades; the ancestry 
of the tables and chairs, the beds and sideboards in use in homes in the 20th century is traced 
back to representations of furniture on Assyrian bas-reliefs and silhouettes of household goods 
on Efruscan pottery. The disparity between the wealth of furniture of Western peoples and those 
of the Orient is at once apparent. Differences in the mode of living and climatic influences are in 
the main responsible for the greater development of household equipment in the West than among 
Eastern peoples. It should be mentioned here too that the aim of the work is to present in orderly 
progression the developments of secular rather than ecclesiastical furniture. 

If is hardly necessary to point out that an encyclopaedia such as this will henceforward be regarded 
by the serious student of furniture as the starting-point of his investigation of the subject. He 
will be more deeply impressed than he could be in any other way, after examining the hundreds 
of illustrations brought together in these pages, by the abiding influence of the art of Greece and 
Rome. Such was the strength of that influence that not even the complete overthrow of those 
cultures by the pressure of barbarians could effect ifs extinction. What was the Renaissance in 
its various forms of expression but a tribute to the vitality, to the sense of proportion and refinement 
of form found in classic work? Again and again when luxury or lethargy has tended to debase 


. ix 


INTRODUCTION 


the arts a return has been made to the sanity and beauty of the antique. Perhaps the most notable 
example occurred in the 18th century in France; when the frivolity of the Louis Quinze style could 
go no further, man turned as to a nafural source of inspiration, to purest Greek concepfions. 

The gradual ousting of Gothic forms by the resuscitation of the classic mode needs no lengthy 
explanation, as the pictorial record unfolds itself it becomes abundantly clear how first classic 
detail was grafted on Gothic construction, and how finally it survived as the only method of 
expression for those who were engaged in the making of household furniture. 

Readers particularly interested in the successive developments in the design of furniture in 
Great Britain realize how largely her craftsmen have been influenced by fashions prevailing in 
European countries. The Palaces and many of the great houses of the country contain woodwork 
which could only have been carved by Italian or Flemish workmen.* During the age of oak wood- 
workers in England and Scotland were profoundly influenced by the work of the Low Countries, 
and in the 17th and 18th centuries much of the work done in France was either directly copied 
or adapted in Great Britain. The student ill acquainted with the Continental styles and fashions, 
as they affected and modified English furniture is really wandering in the dark, unable to apply 
the processes of comparison between any given mode of expression abroad and contemporary work 
in Great Britain, but with this concise yet complete account of the development of European 
furniture he can never be at a loss in relating and co-relating Italian, French, Flemish, German, 
and English Renaissance examples or in examining the similarities and differences of, lef us say, 
Louis Seize creations in France and Sheraton designs in England. 

So much for the value of the work of Dr. Hermann Schmitz for the serious student and 
collector. To the greaf mass of the reading public, the vast number of people who take an 
intelligent interest in the equipment and furnishing of their homes this volume will come as a 
revelation of the infinite variety of form and decoration which is at the disposal of the lover of 
fine furniture. 

Stage coaches, railroads, motor-cars and aeroplanes have followed each other in rapid progression. 
Insularity and frontiers are fast vanishing for all practical purposes, other than warfare and taxation. 
It is possible to breakfast in London, lunch in Paris, dine in Cologne en route for Vienna, and as 
a direct result there is a growing interest on the part of those who dwell in one country in the arts 
and manufactures of the others which are daily brought closer to them by greatly extended 
facilities for rapid travel. The collector of to-day only follows the collectors of the past if when 
travelling abroad he is attracted by and desires to possess the carved armoire, the elaborate chair, 
or the quaint cupboard which make an esthetic appeal to him. For this class of reader The 
Encyclopaedia of Furniture becomes a guide book to European furniture design. 

Incidentally, too, how wide a general knowledge may be obtained from such a Bey The 
various forms which furniture has taken direct the student not only along the highways, but into 
many fascinating bypaths of history. He learns of the migration of peoples, of trade and trade 
routes; how the Romanesque style crept over Europe from Byzantium, and of the way in which 
the influence of the Moors made itself felt along the northern coasts of the Mediterranean, affecting 
furniture design and much else in Italy and Spain. 

A child may be taught the dry-as-dust facts of history, the dates when Julius Cesar entered Gaul 
or conquered Britain, or these things may be made vital and real to him by a series of photographs 
showing him the kind of chair and the type of bed which the Romans popularized in this country 
long before William the Norman conquered if and commenced building the cathedrals. In these 

*T suggest that the examples illustrated on Plates 139 and 147 provide instances of this. 


x 


INTRODUCTION 


pages, too, there is pictorial proof of the fact that long before the generality of mankind could 
write or read they delighted to find the Biblical and mythical incidents with which they were 
conversant carved in wood on the panels of their buffets and side-tables. They indicate also 
how manners and morals are reflected in the work of men’s hands. The exuberance of Stuart 
furniture in England may be compared with the square and serious consfruction of the 
Puritans. 

But this is a digression. Though at every turn there are inevitable and illuminating sidelights 
on history in general, the encyclopaedia is a universal history of furniture, as scholarly as and 
certainly more complete than anything of the kind which has hitherto been attempted. 


LONDON, H. P. SHAPLAND. 
Feb. 26th, 1926. 


xi 


Chapter One. 
Chapter Two. 
Chapter Three. 
Chapter Four. 
Chapter Five. 
Chapter Six. 
Chapter Seven. 
Chapter Eight. 
Chapter Nine. 
Chapter Ten. 
Chapter Eleven. 
Chapter Twelve. 
Chapter Thirteen. 
Chapter Fourteen. 
Chapter Fifteen. 
Chapter Sixteen. 


Chapter Seventeen. 


Chapter Eighteen. 
Chapter Nineteen. 
Chapter Twenty. 


Chapter Twenty-one. 
Chapter Twenty-two. 
Chapter Twenty-three. 
Chapter Twenty-four. 
Chapter Twenty-five. 
Chapter Twenty-six. 


Chapter Twenty-seven. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 

Analysis of Plates 

An Introductory Outline . : 

The Craftsmanship of Egypt and eer ; 

Greek and Roman Furniture 

The Middle Ages 

The Late Gothic Period . 

The Renaissance in Italy 

The Renaissance in France 

The Renaissance in South Germany 

The Renaissance in North Germany, Denmark and Sweden 
The Renaissance in England 

The Renaissance in the Netherlands, Flanders and Spain . 
The Baroque Style . 

Flemish and Dutch Baroque 

German Baroque 

Developments in England during the Baroque Period 
Italian Baroque 

The Louis XIV Period : 

The Régence Style in France and Guriany 

Early English Georgian Furniture and French Rococo 
German, Dutch, Danish and Italian Rococo : 
Chippendale’s Influence in England and North America 
The Louis Seize Style in France ; y 
Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton Furniture in Elec 


Late 18th-Century Furniture in Germany, Denmark and Italy 


The Empire Style 


The Last Phase of Decorative Furniture—The feats 


Style 
Eastern Furniture 
The Plates 


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THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 





ANALYSIS OF PLATES 


1. ANTIQUITY 
q Egyptian 
Plates 1-7 


q Assyrian and Persian 
Plates 8-11 


q Greek 
Plates 12 and 13 


q Etruscan and Roman 
Plates 14-21 


q Near Eastern and Byzantine 
Plates 22-26 


2. THE MIDDLE AGES 


q Romanesque 
Plates 27-38 


q Early Gothic 
Plates 39-41 


3. LATE GOTHIC 


q France 
Plates 42-49 


q Flanders, Netherlands, Spain 
Plates 50-55 


xvii 


ANALYSIS OF PLATES 


q England 
Plates 56-59 


q North Germany (Oak Furniture) 
Plates 60-63 


@ South Germany and the Alpine Provinces (Soft Wood Furniture) 
Plates 64-75 


q Italy 
Plates 75-79 


4, RENAISSANCE 


q Italy 
Plates 80-99 


q France 
Plates 100-117 


@ Germany and Switzerland 
Plates 118-135 


Gq Denmark 
Plates 136, 137 


q England 
Plates 138-148 


q Netherlands 
Plates 149-155 


q Spain 
Plates 156-170 


Xviii 


ANALYSIS OF PLATES 


5. BAROQUE 


q Spain 
Plates 171-177 


q Flanders 
Plates 178 and 179 


q France 
Plates 180-188 


q Italy 
Plates 189-192 


q Germany 
Plates 193-205 


q Holland and Colonial Style 
Plates 206-209 


q England 
Plates 210-219 


6. REGENCE AND ROCOCO 


q England 
Plates 220-224 and 257 


q France and Italy 
Plates 225-235 


q Germany 
Plates 236-251 


q Holland, Spain and Colonial 
Plates 252-256 


xix 


ANALYSIS OF PLATES 


7. LOUIS XVI AND CLASSIC REVIVAL 


q France 
Plates 259-267 


q Germany 
Plates 258, 268-278 


q England 
Plates 279-285 


8. EMPIRE AND. BIEDERMEIER 


q France, Denmark 
Plates 285-293 


q Germany, Russia 
Plates 294-306 


9. THE NEAR EAST AND THE FAR EAST 
Plates 308-320 


CHAPTER ONE 
An Introductory Outline 


WHAT we know of ancient furniture proves that some cultures possessed an exceptional wealth 
of such work, while others were poorly provided. Climatic conditions, which produce varied 
forms of dwelling and widely varying habits, explain the discrepancy. 

For example, Western civilization has developed the making of decorative furniture con- 
siderably, whereas the Islamic peoples of Asia Minor and Persia, and those of India and 
Eastern Asia, have little need of more than a limited supply of furniture in their houses. 
It will be remembered also, that all Orientals are in the habit of sitting on the ground when 
eafing and drinking. 

The stock of ancient furniture varies with different cultures, because ifs preservation has been 
affected by fortuitous circumstances. Owing to the custom of placing models of actual pieces of 
furniture in the tombs of the kings, a considerable amount of Egyptian furniture has been pre- 
served, and this has been enriched by the discoveries in Tutankhamen’s tomb. But the equally 
important furniture-making of the Assyrians, Greeks and Romans has survived only in sculptures 
and pictures. 

The art of furniture-making is connected with the dwellings and architecture of tribes and peoples 
finally settled in any given area or country. Therefore the history of this art begins with monu- 
mental architecture, and it is by no mere chance that the Egyptians led in both the former and 
the latter art. In this branch of human activity they also laid down the laws for other nations. 
Various forms of seats, such as camp-stools, stools, arm-chairs, and such things as bedsteads, 
coffers and wooden funeral coffers, are models as to ufility, shape, construction and the treatment 
of wood, when they are of Egyptian workmanship, and this is especially true of the period of the 
New Empire from 1500 B.c. Related in style are the restrained forms of the Assyrian Empire, 
in the country of the Tigris and Euphrates. But here our knowledge is limited to the representa- 
tions of the state furniture of the Assyrian kings reigning in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., as 
depicted on the reliefs in the Mesopotamian palaces. Alike with the furniture forms of the Persian 
Empire, which, following in sequence, are only preserved in relief representations of the 6th and 
5th centuries B.C. 

Greek furniture, of which our knowledge is almost exclusively derived from representations on 
stone reliefs and vases, was in the early period—the archean epoch of the 7th and 6th centuries 
B.c.—akin to that of the Persians and Egyptians. With the development of the Greek genius in 
the 5th century, seats assume purer and more beautiful forms. The curved lines of the legs and 
backs seem to make for greater freedom of posture when sifting. European culture emancipates 
itself from that of the Orient and the basin of the Eastern Mediterranean. Wood-turning becomes 
more important during the last centuries before Christ. Seats made of turned wood came into 
fashion in addition to those of squared wood. Coffers and chests, often provided with lids sloping 
up to a central ridge, like a roof, and standing on legs, resemble the work of the late Egyptian 
epoch, only they are of finer workmanship and often richly inlaid and veneered. Some Greek 
sarcophagi of the 4th century before Christ have been found in Crimean tombs. 

Roman furniture has developed from that of the Efrurians of the 6th century B.c., forms pre- 
served by representations on painted vases and on stone reliefs showing, like the early Greek 
furniture of this period, severely straight lines. The use of furniture made partly or entirely of 
bronze is characteristic. This feature is common to the Efruscan as well as to late Roman decora- 
tive furniture. Many specimens of the last century before the Christian era have been found at 


B 1 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


Herculaneum and Pompeii. The legs and feet of seats, couches and fables are either turned or 
made fo simulate naturalistic forms. 

Medizval furniture begins the great development of Western craftsmanship, and claims the 
greatest interest in modern fimes. Turned wood was employed in the construction of arm- 
chairs, stools and couches in the Byzantine Empire, and in the medizeval Teutonic kingdoms 
from the shores of the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. That most important medizval receptacle, 
the coffer, is a survival of the late antique coffer in its constructional character, though heavier, 
as was characteristic of the Romanesque form. The early Gothic style did little to change 
decorative furniture. Till the end of the 14th century, tables and seats retained the traditional 
forms, with their turned or square legs. The construction of such receptacles as coffers and 
cupboards—articles that were becoming more important—stfill followed the heavy character of 
the early Middle Ages. But in low relief ornament the pointed arch and tracery predominated. 
Northern Germany, Northern France, the Netherlands, England and Scandinavia were in those 
days a closely related group in matters touching the arts. 

In the beginning of the 15th century came a change in furniture-making, actotmrinianens the 
development of Late Gothic, when construction consisting of a frame of mortised members with 
inserted panels entirely changed the appearance as well as the structure of furnifure. This 
change originated in the Burgundian Netherlands in the period of the brothers van Eyck. From 
there it spread to France, Germany, England and Scandinavia. Gothic decorative furniture deve- 
loped comparatively slowly in Italy and Spain; the work of Northern Italy has certain affinities 
with that of the Tyrol and other German Alpine countries. 

But about 1500 A.D., with the dawn of the Renaissance, Italian furniture craftsmanship pre- 
dominates, especially the work of Tuscany and Florence. Its influence directs French furniture- 
making info new channels, and presently it affects the furniture of the Netherlands and South 
Germany; the North German, Danish, English and Scandinavian craftsmen, more conservative in 
the matter of national traditions, followed Italian fashions somewhat later. Spanish decorative 
furniture of the Renaissance works out a line of its own. The old Moorish element is impressed 
upon it sfill. 

Intarsia attains a high level of development in Spain and particularly in Northern Italy, Southern 
Germany and in North Germany during the latter part of the 16th century. The severe division 
of surface obtaining in Early and High Renaissance work gave way in the last third of the 16th 
century to Late Renaissance art with its wealth of plastic ornament, an art which appears most 
pronouncedly in the Flemish Netherlands, North Germany, Scandinavia and England. 

During the period of the Thirty Years’ War, the craft of furniture-making assumes an entirely 
different character under the influence of the Baroque style. Among the changes wrought by 
this style are: the preference for walnut, the perfection of veneering, the development of new 
forms in cupboards and tables, and last, but not least, the introduction of upholstery with leather 
or textile coverings for seats. 

The social fabric of life from the second half of the 17th century bee an important bearing on 
furniture: in Italy, France and Spain, and partly in Germany, the position of absolute sovereigns 
and the nobility was exalted and unassailably established; whereas the burgher element in the 
German Free Towns, in Holland, and more especially in England when the Commonwealth followed 
the execution of Charles I, developed a powerful creative activity in furniture-making. 

The style variations of the Baroque period follow each other in succession, and in the great 
fashions cultivated by the French kings their most striking expression found an outlet, and from 


2 


AN INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE 


those fashions they have partly derived their names. But other styles are contemporary with 
them, as for instance a special German and English style in the 18th century. Thus Louis 
Quatorze (1661-1715) has its parallel in the German Baroque, and in the late Stuart, William 
and Mary and Queen Anne (1702-1714) styles of England. The Paris Régence style, named 
after the Regent, Philippe of Orleans (1714-1723), is the transitional period from Baroque to 
Rococo. What is known as Louis Quinze in Paris from about 1725-1765 is termed Rococo in 
Germany, ifs English contemporary being early and mid-Georgian. In France the Louis Seize 
style (about 1765-1790) follows, and is coeval in Germany with “Zopf,’ and in England with the 
furniture of Hepplewhite, Adam and Sheraton. The downfall of the French Monarchy is followed 
by the Directoire style—named after the government of the Directory—and after 1804 the Direc- 
toire is followed by the Empire, during the reign of Napoleon. This style has greatly influenced 
the courts of Europe. In Germany it develops into a mature Classicism. 

After the Wars of Liberation the last of the historic styles, the “Biedermeier,”’ flourished in 
Germany under the influence of early 19th-century English domestic furniture. The name 
“Biedermeier” is derived from a Philistine character in the journal Fliegende Blatter, and this 
style develops towards the middle of the century into the second or neo-Rococo in Germany, 
into Louis Philippe in France, info Early Victorian in England: it is a mode rather than a style 
which began with the imitation of historic forms. This imitation became particularly conspicuous 
in decorative furniture in the form of a neo-Renaissance style in the second half of the 19th 
century. 

Oriental furniture cannot be compared with the magnificent development of European work. 
Noteworthy in Eastern productions is the furniture of Islamic origin. If is conspicuous for 
ornamental intarsia. The most important branches are the Persian and Arabic, the furniture of 
Arabian craftsmen attaining its zenith of development in the 16th and 17th centuries, and in- 
fluencing the intarsia work of Venice and Spain. Indian furniture—mostly of a later period—is 
sui generis, so too is the work of China and Japan. This furniture of the Far East begins to attain 
its highest level in the 16th and 17th centuries. Its special feature is the perfect lacquer process, 
based on a tradition of many centuries, a feature that was a fruitful source of inspiration to the 
makers of European decorative furniture of the Baroque period at the close of the 17th century. 


CHAPTER TWO 
The Craftsmanship of Egypt and Assyria 


MOST Egyptian furniture of wood dates from the New Empire, which flourished when 
the Rameses ruled at Thebes in the second half of the second millennium before Christ. 
Single types, such as the folding stool, a low stool and the frame of a couch resfing on four 
bulls’ hoofs, can be traced as far back as the Ancient Empire, or even to prehistoric times, 
4000 B.C. 

The folding stool is the same in its main features as the modern camp stool: the legs crossed 
like the blades of scissors, supporting a leather seat, and terminating in a rail that linked both 
feet of the front legs and both feet of the back legs, the ends of these foof-rails, as they may be 
termed, often being finished fo represent a duck’s beak. Among rigid seats the low stool and 
the low chair are the most common. Both have four square legs. The seats are either of boards 
or rushes, and the frame is generally mortised and fastened with a few pegs; metal nails are 
not used. 

Most of the richer chests and seats belong to the most flourishing period of the New Empire, 
dating about 1500 B.c, and the following centuries. There are stools with curved seats and 
horizontal supports; and also seats, sometimes double, borne by lions’ paws or bulls’ hoofs, 
having solid backs of thin, narrow vertical boards enclosed by a frame. Sometimes these backs 
are slightly curved to afford better support; frequently the back is sloping and is braced by 
vertical members fixed to the back legs; a method illustrating the carefully conceived construc- 
tional work of Egyptian craffsmen. On the whole their constructive instincts are admirable, as 
the joints of their chair frames and vertical supporting members indicate: it is characteristic that 
this vertical stress is expressed artistically in the form. The seats are rigid in type, which doubt- 
less accords with the stiff and upright sitting posture of the Egyptians, whose legs were encased 
in tight garments and were kept close together, like the feet. This restriction of line is naturally 
expressed in the bulls’ hoofs and lions’ paws of the more richly decorated seats and couches. 
The claws and paws are often placed on high wooden blocks. Crescent-shaped wooden supports 
served to raise the head during sleep. The sides of thrones are often constructed to represent 
the entire figure of a sfriding lion. It is characteristic of the restraint of Egyptian art forms that 
the four paws terminating the legs of seats and couches are always placed in one direction, parallel 
with one another, like the feet of striding animals. 

The various forms of the chest are also skilfully constructed, the frames being braced with 
boards inserted crosswise to prevent warping and shrinkage. There are long rectangular chests 
in this class of furniture, also jewel caskets and chest-like sarcophagi. The majority of seats and 
tables, and particularly chests and sarcophagi, were painted, the chairs often only in white. 
Chests and coffers are brightly decorated in colour with bands of geometrical patterns, some- 
times being inlaid with blue and white pieces of faience or semi-precious stones. The Egyptians 
usually employed hard woods which were imported from Cilicia and other parts, for there was 
little timber in their country except the date palm, and this could not be used for furniture- 
making: sycamore, olivewood, yew and cedar were among other woods used by the Egypfians. 
The more ornamental seats are slightly inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, and even gold and 
other metals. Tutankhamen’s tomb displayed an astonishing wealth of such magnificent furniture 
and chariots. The style of such ornamental features as the carved wood lions, paw feet, hawks, 
and so forth, is similar to that of the Egyptian stone sculptures. Egyptian furniture, like Egyptian 
architecture, adhered strictly to tectonic laws. One is always struck by the profoundly inventive 


4 


THE CRAFTSMANSHIP OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA 


genius developed by this people more than four thousand years ago in connection with con- 
struction and woodworking, and in moulding their symbols into artistic forms for seats and 
couches, chests and tables. 


Only from the sculptures in the royal palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis do we gain an idea of 
the furniture produced under the Assyrian and later Persian Empires; civilizations that expanded 
gradually from the country of the Euphrates and Tigris to Asia Minor, Syria, and, for a time, to 
the frontiers of Egypt. These reliefs depict the furniture of this ancient Oriental culture during 
the period of 1000 to 500 B.c. The pronounced dynastic character of these empires is the reason 
why representations of highly ornamental furniture in the royal palaces have been preserved 
rather than those of simple domestic furniture, as in the case of Egypt. The Assyrian Empire, 
which developed in the 8th century, B.C., came into contact with the Egyptian sphere of power 
in the 7th century, and under king Asurbanipal (Sardanapalus) in Nineveh enjoyed considerable 
prosperity unfil it was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus. It possessed magnificent palaces, 
furnished with seats, couches, credences and vessel holders, designs characterized by the same 
rigidity of construction as Egyptian work, and similar severe conventions of style. 

The square legs of Assyrian furniture usually terminate in lions’ paws, in the Egyptian fashion. 
A tendency towards ornate forms surpassing those of Egyptian royal furniture is only notable 
in the enrichment of those bases, or feet, to chairs and tables that resemble inverted pine cones, 
and in the supporting blocks that are sometimes inserted between the rails of the underframing. 
The legs are encircled with bands at intervals. The luxurious cushions on the couches, the heads 
of which curve forward and form a species of arm rest, are continuous. The rich decoration of 
the upholstery and coverings with tassels and fringe is very striking. The garments and headgear 
of the Assyrian kings are also conspicuous for a great wealth of ornamental textile decoration. 
It cannot be denied that both in ancient Assyrian and ancient Persian art, which succeeded it, 
the peculiar Oriental love of decorative surface ornament is more pronounced than in the tectonic 
art of the Egyptians. In the Assyrian Empire surface ornament with coloured glazed faience 
pictures developed to perfection at an early date: the excavations in Assur have recently furnished 
fresh proof of this. 

The Persians, who succeeded to the Assyrian sovereignty of Mesopotamia in the 6th century 
B.C., adopted many Assyrian art forms. Their furniture-making was also influenced by Assyrian 
prototypes; and through the medium of representations on stone reliefs we are acquainted with 
examples of the ornafe royal state furniture in the palaces of Persepolis. Conspicuous in Persian 
thrones and couches is the use of long legs composed of various members, terminating in conven- 
tionalized bulls’ hoofs. Turning seems to have played a great part, for legs with bulging contours 
are frequently found. There was an interchange of forms between the furniture of the Persian 
Empire dating from Cyrus to Alexander—who extended Persian power to the Mediterranean coast 
of Asia Minor—and Greek furniture to the 6th and 5th centuries B.c. 


CHAPTER THREE 


Greek and Roman Furniture 


GREEK furniture of the 6th century B.C., in common with the contemporary work of Egypt and 
Persia, is rigidly rectangular in construction. If we look at the double chair on the stone relief 
_ from Laconia (6th century B.C.) we recognize its relationship to Egypto-Persian furniture, expressed 

not only by the stiff back and arms, and fhe severe, conventionalized bulls’ hoofs, but in the 
straight lines of the seated figures, their carriage and features. But with the beginning of the 5th 
century B.c., the rise of the Greek genius, which is most magnificently expressed in the art of the 
Parthenon, and the virtual emancipation of the European spirit from the lethargy and restraint of 
ancient Oriental conceptions, a new sense of form is expressed in furniture. 

The chairs, seats and stools represented on the reliefs of the Parthenon and on several Athenian 
tombs differ by their fundamental simplicity from the seats of the Persian epoch and the related 
archaic Greek period. In contradistinction to the rigid type of seat consisting of various profiles, 
animal motifs and ornament of the older period, the Greek types of the 5th century are composed 
of a few clear main mofifs. A stool with four turned legs tapering towards the foot, and a chair 
made of square pieces with delicately curved legs and back, are most frequently used. The free 
attitude in sifting in a natural position; the graceful carriage of the body; the flowing drapery, 
all harmonize with the natural form of these seats, in striking contrast with the Egyptians sitting 
rigidly on their stools and chairs. The merit of the Greeks is that they discovered a natural and 
graceful form for obvious requirements. The couch was formed of posts with a horizontal frame, 
and was painted with palmettes and meanders. 

The tables were low and mostly movable, credences and drinking tables being often three-legged 
and made of bronze. The principal receptacle, as with the Egyptians, was the chest. A number 
of wooden sarcophagi found in the Crimea are of an unusual shape for chests: long boxes or 
coffers, with roof-like lids sloping down from a cenfral ridge, and resting on elongated square 
posts. The panels would be joined to the framework by tongues and grooves, in the manner of 
the Egyptian chests. These Greek coffers and chests belonging to the time of Alexander the 
Great (4th century B.C.) are mosfly painfed in a vivid way; generally there is a blue ground with 
palmette frieze; single palmettes, meanders and similar motifs being drawn from the wealth of 
Greek ornament. And it is clear that this painting enlivened the character and gave greater 
expression to the proportions, constructional details and the technique of the craftsmanship, than 
was the case with the Egyptian chests which were treated as a single mass of colour. 


The Etrurians, predecessors of the Romans on Italian soil, developed confemporaneously with 
the ancient Greek tribes of the 6th century B.C. a type of furniture of their own. It shares the 
rigid construction in rectangular forms and the severe conventions of fhe archaic Greek work. 
We obfain an idea of the furniture designed for resting from a number of well-preserved fterra- 
cotta funeral chests, which usually represent husband and wife together on their couch. An example 
is the bed from Caere, an old Italic seat of culture in Abruzzo. It shows the austere line of the 
posts with their volute-like capitals and palmette ornament. The wealth of bronze furniture, and 
parts of furniture, is striking; and this also applies to Roman furniture. The domestic utensils of 
the Efrurians, such as tripods, kettles and pails, shields and weapons were notable for the high 
development of bronze work. 

It is regrettable that Roman furniture shared the same fate as the products of Greece, all wooden 


6 


GREEK AND ROMAN FURNITURE 


pieces having perished. But numerous pieces of bronze furniture and parts, particularly from 
Pompeii, have been handed down, including several examples of furniture for resting which are 
remarkable for their imitation in metal of the richly varied outlines of turned wood supports. 
In addition, low stools and tripods as well as lamp-stands, have been preserved in cast bronze— 
chiefly from the time of the emperors. They are decorated with plastic figures and plant orna- 
ment, which also characterize the crockery and other domestic ufensils of the Romans in later 
centuries. 

We may obfain an idea of the furnishing of a Roman house from pictorial and sculptural repre- 
sentations. Naturally the furniture is closely related in its main features to post-Alexandrian Greek 
work. The Roman desire for luxury is: expressed by the richer upholstery of seats and couches, 
in the cushions and drapery. Couches were used at meals, each accommodating three guests. The 
employment of richly draped textiles and carpets to cover the fables and to screen off the apart- 
ments was very extensive in a Roman house. The folding stool and a broad stool (the bisellium) 
were peculiar types of seat: the chair with curved legs crossed X-wise—similar to Greek models— 
was in common use as a curule in the senate and law courts, and this type was chiefly imitated 
in the period of the Empire. This is not the place to discuss the bronze and marble furniture 
which was so important in the Roman home and in social functions, furniture that was enriched 
with ornament, such as lions’ paws, sphinxes, hermz and acanthus; we should remember that the 
Empire period, which imitated the style of the Roman Empire, transferred these forms of Roman 
bronze and marble furniture to wooden furniture, thereby producing an absolutely wrong conception 
of the simple and ufilitarian household furniture of the Romans. 

Early Christian decorative furniture differs in no respect from that of the late Roman period. 
What is striking in the banquet scenes depicted in the paintings and mosaics of the early Christian 
churches is that the tables and couches are draped in such a manner that the details of the furniture 
are entirely hidden. 


CHAPTER FOUR 
The Middle Ages 


NORTHERN barbarians invaded the Roman Empire, which collapsed, and thereafter Roman 
culture retreated to the Eastern Empire (later the Byzantine Empire), and many traditions of late 
antique art were preserved during the following centuries, especially at the Byzantine imperial 
court. Decorative furniture which, in its fundamental lines, is descended from the models of the 
late Greek period, is enriched to accord with the luxurious and splendid mode of Byzantine life. 
Turned frames are used more frequently for seats and couches than was the case with the later 

Greek decorative furniture. Furniture embellished with ivory and intarsia is noteworthy. It will 
be remembered that ivory-carving and turning was an important branch of industry in Byzantium. 
Silk weaving, which flourished there from the 6th century, influenced the upholstery and draping 
of furniture as well as the textile hangings in the apartments. It is easy fo unterstand that 
the art of the Byzantine court was greatly influenced by that of the Near East. Thus silk-weaving, 
with its decorative animal patterns, was partly an outcome of that new Persian Empire of the 
Sassanians which was established on the foundations of the old Persian Empire in the 2nd cen- 
tury A.D. 

Naturally the Teutonic peoples needed many centuries of development before they evolved decorative 
furniture that approached the standard of the household equipment common in the cifies and 
provinces of the Roman Empire, although they were acquainted with such Roman work. The 
influence of antique tradition upon the beginnings of the craft of furniture-making among the 
Teutonic peoples of the early Middle Ages was decisive. Everything indicates that the turned 
work of antiquity found on chairs and couches was a pattern for the turned furniture of Teutonic 
tribes in early medieval times. An important piece of evidence is a sarcophagus made of turned 
spars belonging to an Alemanic prince of the 6th century. 

A number of seats, arm-chairs and benches, with legs, sides and backs entirely composed of turned 
spindles, have been preserved, particularly from the period of the Romanesque style, which had 
a peculiar character of its own, strong in its influence on the ecclesiastical and secular architecture 
of the Teutonic empires. This turned furniture—to which we must add a three-legged stool—was 
not only used in Germany, but wherever German tribes had settled. It is met with in the remote 
valleys of Grisons as well as in the mountains of Scandinavia, in France and in England. Specimens 
belonging to the Romanesque sfyle period, 12th and 13th centuries, are, of course, rare. The majority 
of them date from later centuries and from rural districts, some of which have refained the forms 
of the Middle Ages until the 18th and even the 19th centuries. These late descendants—examples 
of peasant art—are only distinguished from the simple, powerful creations of the Romanesque 
period itself (among which the finest is a bench from Alpirsbach Monastery in Stuttgart) by the 
details of the turned profiles, and the extreme delicacy of the grooves and curves. It may be 
said, parenthetically, that medizval furniture was painted in bright colours. This tradition has 
been fostered amongst the peasantry until the 19th century. 

The folding chair of antiquity continued to be made in the Middle Ages. The terminations 
offered opportunities for introducing heads of animals and claws, in the manner of the Romanesque 
style. Chairs with square legs, or made of boards are rarer. Of the latfer a number of chairs 
with rich open-work carving have been preserved in Scandinavia. The low-relief carvings, consisting 
of dragons and intertwined floral decoration, favoured by Scandinavian wood carvers, are peculiar 
northern modifications of the Byzantine, Langobard and Celto-Germanic low relief carvings. Such 
carvings are also found on Norwegian wooden churches. 


8 


THE MIDDLE AGES 


Among the receptacles of the early Middle Ages, the coffer is the most important. The old 
dug-out coffers, made from a single free trunk and often bound with iron, date from the oldest 
period of Germanic culture. They are found in remote districts of Germany, France and particu- 
larly of England. But the most distinguished form of receptacle is the chest raised on high legs 
with a sloping lid like a gable roof, and which is doubflessly a descendant of the wooden sarco- 
phagi, medizval roofed coffers and chests. This is proved by the addition of gable panels, the 
upper nofched ends of which are reminiscent of the roof acroteria of the late Greek sarcophagi. 
Even the method of constructing these Romanesque roof-coffers is akin fo that adopted for the 
late Greek wooden chests. The side panels are joined to their frames with groove and tongue, 
and the rails are morfised to the vertical members, a few wooden pegs being used. It is true the 
heavy shape of the chests, the clumsy sloping posts and the massive lids, express an awkward, 
heavy-handed craftsmanship, typical of Romanesque architecture. Economical embellishment of 
carving in low relief is to be found on the front of these chests; chiefly rosettes of chip carving 
and curved lines which indicate the influence of the low-relief ornament characteristic of the 
furniture and carvings of the period identified with the migration of the peoples and the Byzantine 
Empire. These roofed chests, as well as Romanesque turned chairs, are found all the way from 
the Alps to Scandinavia and England. In the Alps they are mostly made of soft woods such as 
fir, whereas in Low Germany, England and Scandinavia oak predominates. 

The most common chests, long rectangular boxes with or without legs, are richly ornamented 
with iron bands in France and Western Germany. Besides chests there are also smaller boxes, 
eifher carved or ornamented with inlaid work. Cupboards are very rare. The earliest are quite 
plain receptacles made of heavy boards, high and rectangular in form. They were first used to 
store mass books, sacred vessels, and garments. The stiff form of the rectangular cupboard is 
relieved by a gable-roof top. Early forms of such cupboards have been found chiefly in Alpine 
and neighbouring countries, especially in the Tyrol and Austria. 

The general conclusion we arrive at after this survey is that the main feature of Romanesque 
furniture is unadorned straightforwardness expressed in the work of the carpenter and joiner. 
The scanty low-relief and chip-carving ornament is of secondary importance. Architectural 
motifs, such as round arches and so forth—as on the chests in S. Valeria ob Sitten in Switzerland 
—are rare. Our present conception of Romanesque decorative furniture, widened by the investi- 
gations of Otto von Falke, is quite different from that expressed in the sideboards of the smoking 
and drinking rooms and studies in “Romanesque style.” This rendering of the “style” was 
the work of the cabinet-makers of the last generation in their unsuccessful efforts to copy previous 
styles. Medizeval furniture was the outcome of utilitarian requirements and the technique of 
craffsmen. This is demonstrated by the fact that Gothic architecture, which spread from France 
over Christian Europe in the second half of the 13th century, hardly influenced the construction 
and form of domestic furniture during several centuries; whereas ecclesiastical furniture, choir 
stalls, lecterns and so forth, received the impress of church architecture in the shape of buttress 
and pointed arch and richly carved plastic ornament; chests, coffers and cupboards retained the 
solid, simple Romanesque plan. Seats are still made of turned wood. 

Gothic ornament only begins to play a modest réle in household furniture during the 14th 
century. The artists were first tempted to decorate the fronts with Gothic pointed arches in 
low relief. The largest group of this class is that of the Low Saxon chests of the 14th and 15th 
centuries. They are made according to the old fashion of thick oak planks with corner posts and 
cross-boards, mortised and tenoned. The sides are fastened to a strong frame, and the heavy lids 


9 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


are mosfly incised with flat quatrefoils. The immediate connection with the Romanesque style 
is shown by the carved ornament on the fronts, which are partly decorated with grotesque animals in 
circular patterns, derived from the motifs of Romanesque weaving and embroidery. In the later 
pieces of furniture we find pointed arches and tracery with early Gothic grotesque animal figures. 
These chests are found in the district between the Weser and the Elbe in the heart of Low Saxony, 
above all in Liineburg, Brunswick, and in the surroundings of the Hartz Mountains; but the 
same type is also met with in Holstein as far north as Jutland, though the Gothic tracery and 
animal ornament are coarse and more stereotyped. Similar chests, from the disfrict of Osna- 
briick, with narrow carved pointed arches and figures form a class of their own. The Early 
Gothic oak chest with carved fracery has spread along the north coast of Germany to Flanders, 
Northern France and England. The only differences are in the tracery. Taken as a whole, we 
may say that the decorative furniture of the Teutonic peoples, particularly those of Low Germany, 
the Netherlands, Northern France, England and Scandinavia, forms a single group until the end 
of the 14th century. 


10 


CHAPTER FIVE 
The Late Gothic Period 


AT the beginning of the 15th century a step was taken which rovolutionized the craft of furniture- 
making. The development of new constructional methods began in Flanders, then known as the 
Burgundian Netherlands, and affected that disfrict and also those districts that had shared in the 
development, including England and Scandinavia. The substantially constructed chests made of 
thick boards and planks—work that was simple joinery—are superseded by framework, stiles and 
rails fitted with thin panels. It is certainly no mere chance that this change took place coevally 
with the sudden development of luxury in the homes of the Flemish townsfolk of the cities which 
flourished through their international trade and the wealth of the Burgundian Dukes. Strange 
to say, the first evidences of such furniture construction is seen in representations of interiors 
in pictures by the brothers van Eyck in Ghent and Bruges. The transition to perspective painting 
in northern art—of which the van Eycks were the forerunners—was a period accompanied by new 
departures in furnifure-making. The cupboard begins to compete with the chest, which until 
then had been almost completely in possession of the field. The dressoir appears. To a certain 
extent this article is a chest with doors, raised on high, square upright members, and providing 
accommodation for silver vessels. The top of the chest and the plinth shelf between the uprights 
provided places for bright brass vessels. In representations of rich banquets at the Burgundian 
and French courts, these dressoirs are often depicted as credences, with back panels and a canopy 
supported by corbels. The upper part of the piece recedes, forming a series of step-like shelves, 
whereon vessels and other utensils are placed. It is true that only very few credences of this 
kind have been preserved in the Copenhagen, Paris and Antwerp museums. 

The Oressoir is a piece of furniture that has been frequently imitated by the cabinet-makers of 
the second half of the 19th century, who catered for the romantic ideas of their period by repro- 
ducing old styles. It has also been faked by the inclusion of old parts. We should note here that 
Gothic dressoirs are very scarce. The majority come from the district of the Lower Rhine, which 
was then a cultural unit with Flanders. It is just this type that has been faked so often in the 
19th century by the addition of Gothic architectural motifs and by adding to the carved ornamenta- 
tion. The wrong-headedness of the last generation in its conception of the essence, as it were, 
of medizval decorative furniture is demonstrated by their grafting on carpenter’s work fragments 
of ornament borrowed from church architecture. During the 15th century, large closed cupboards 
increased in number in the Lower Rhine district. Some had two doors, others four; and some- 
times there would be several small lockers above and below, with drawers and flaps in between, 
like the Liineburg “Schenkscheiben.” The framework of the cupboard rendered many variations 
possible. The coffer, which also adopted the frame with inserted panels, was offen developed as 
a bench, with arms and back of the same style. Single seats with drawers or lockers underneath 
are also met with. A favourite piece of furniture in France was a coffer-bench with a movable 
back, enabling one to sit on either side. It is remarkable that the invention of new methods of 
construction should be accompanied by a peculiar flat form of ornament, the linenfold, which 
makes ifs appearance on the panels of North European furniture. This ornament was produced 
by means of moulding planes, and resembles folded parchment or linen, being skilfully hollowed 
out at the ends. The majority of chests and chest seats in oak are decorated in this manner on 
the panels. The linenfold is found in the north of France, Flanders, in Low Germany up to the 
Baltic, in Scandinavia and England. Besides this, diapered ornament, especially X-shaped forms, 
is employed. The linenfold and its related flat ornament were developed with the greatest 


11 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


beauty on the chests and cupboards made on the Lower Rhine, and in Cologne, Flanders and 
Ghent. Furniture with linenfold ornament is associated with Northern France as far as the Seine 
and Loire. French furniture is distinguished by the austerity and regularity of ifs linenfold. The 
variations of the chest, the chest seat, the chest with flap seat, and high-backed single chairs with 
box-seats were particularly well developed in France. In this period the pomp and position of 
royal and princely courts begin to be expressed in terms of decorafive furniture, which boasted 
magnificent forms and more refined work. Decorative carving acquires a richer and more 
important character, with foliated ornamentation and animal motifs playing a larger part in the 
design of the finer French furniture. 

The Late Gothic furniture of England is characterized by sparse ornament and heavy consfruc- 
tion. A low, wide type of Oressoir with three broad doors was used as a credence or cupboard, 
and is peculiar to England. The contours of English Late Gothic oak furniture are also heavy 
and simple. The peculiar rigid, simple line of later English furniture is already foreshadowed in 
the Late Gothic work. Towards the end of the 15th century the flamboyant tracery ornamentf, 
belonging to the last phases of Late Gothic, as well as the Tudor ornamental forms in England, 
are transferred to the panels of furniture. Such ornament found ifs most beautiful and purest 
expression on the panels of the French chests dating from about 1500. At this period heraldic 
emblems, the coat-of-arms of the owner of the piece of furniture, were inserted between the 
tracery and linenfold panels, especially on bridal coffers which were favoured as wedding presents. 
The folding chair, consisting of a number of intersecfing straight or curved square-sectioned 
supports which carried the seat, originated in Italy, and is a new type which, fogether with the 
Late Gothic chest furniture, travelled from Flanders. 


In the 15th century the decorative furniture of Southern Germany and the Alpine countries 
was no longer made in the substantial and honest fashion of the Romanesque and Early Gothic 
pieces: with the dawn of domestic comfort and luxury it became lighter and more finely balanced. 
Furniture-making in the Late Gothic period was forced into new channels in these districts by 
the employment of soft woods, such as fir and pine, which had always been favoured there. Soff- 
wood furniture differed considerably in its development from the oak furniture of Northern 
Germany and Flanders. South German furniture attained to ifs highest development in the 
Alpine countries—German Switzerland, Southern Bavaria, the Tyrol, Styria, Carinthia and Upper 
Austria. 

There are various points of relationship between decorative furniture of the northern slopes of 
the Alps and that of the southern as far as the North Italian, Lombardic and Venetian spheres of 
art influence. Late Gothic furniture in Southern Germany and fhe Alpine countries develops in 
conjunction with the rich wainscofing in fir and pine that appears in apartments, many examples 
of which are to be found in Swiss, Bavarian and Austrian museums. 

The chest, which had hitherto known no competitor in the way of receptacles for storing various 
articles, was superseded by the cupboard in the Late Gothic period. The new manner of con- 
structing the chest of a solid frame with inserted panels had a great effect on Late Gothic furniture 
in this district foo. Chest and cupboard were raised on a high frame with legs. The chest itself 
was offen enclosed in a frame. The frame, which at an early date was joined by doveftailing, was 
ornamented mostly with flat carving. The most important type of cupboard is formed by join- 
ing two chests, separated by a broad frame often containing drawers. The top is crowned by a 


12 


THE LATE GOTHIC PERIOD 


broad frieze decorated with tracery and a castellated cornice. The most elaborate of these cup- 
boards (with four doors) are found in the Tyrol, Carinthia and Upper Austria. The plinth 
frame, cornice and side pilasters of the better pieces are of limewood, and have pierced ornamental 
details representing tracery and interlaced thistle convolutions. The vigorous naturalism of the 
Southern German Late Gothic carving, which produced such admirable work on wooden altars 
and choir stalls, is also found in the ornament of these cupboards. One of the most noteworthy 
pieces, a cupboard with the coats-of-arms of Gieng and Lupin, is signed by the famous Swabian 
wood-carver, Jérg Syrlin. The cupboard was made in Ulm about 1465, and was an early work 
of the master who later on rose from a carpenter to be a sculptor, and who created the choir stalls 
of Ulm Minster, the most celebrated masterpiece of this class. A late example of a South German 
cupboard with four doors and carved ornament (now in the Wartburg and made in Nuremberg 
about 1510) betrays the influence of Diirer’s decorative art in the rich convolutions of its thistle 
patterns. The panels of most of these cupboards are veneered with rarer woods, such as grained 
ash and maple. The veneering of the doors is mitred, that is, cut at an angle of forty-five degrees. 
When the piece is made of solid fir, considerable scope is afforded for flat carving. Coffers, 
cupboards and panelling, which are completely covered with carving, particularly those from the 
Tyrol and Carinthia, have been preserved. Difficulties presented by the grain of fir necessitated 
the flat carved ornament, and it consists chiefly of interlaced Late Gothic thistle foliage pattern- 
ings, the darker ground being tinted with colour. The principal colours are green for the pattern 
and red for the ground. Late Gothic flat carving was continued as an ornamental form on the 
softwood southern furniture until the first decades of the Renaissance; alike with the linenfold 
pattern of northern oak furniture. As a matter of fact, several new furniture types were made in 
the southern Late Gothic period, the box-settle, for instance. Then in addition to the older 
double-doored cupboards and those of a later date with four doors, there was the vestry cupboard 
with large drawers in the lower part. Of these cupboards there are two examples with coloured 
flat carving from Feldkirchen in Carinthia. One is a double hutch in the Figdor collection dated 
1521, and the other is in the Berlin Schloss Museum dated 1539. A piece that is closely con- 
nected with the wainscoting of South German living rooms is the narrow washstand with a place 
for a tin jug and bowl in the middle. Fortunately a number of South German bedsteads dating 
from the Late Gothic period have been preserved. They have square posts and side pieces, and 
at the head there is a form of wooden canopy. 

There are better specimens of Late Gothic tables in the south than the north. The most common 
is the trestle table with a heavy top, the trestles being affixed to members that resembled sledge- 
runners in form, connected by cross bars. A special type of table is fitted with a drawer below 
the top, and in the more elaborate specimens this drawer has minor divisions, and very often 
has another slanting drawer under it. Late Gothic tables with polygonal tops supported by a 
multangular central post are seldom met with. A characteristic example is the table with a round 
stone top and artistically carved Late Gothic supporting arches, the frame of which was made by 
Tilmann Riemenschneider in Wiirzburg about 1500. 

Among South German Late Gothic chairs, the turned and four-legged varieties were clearly 
superseded by folding types introduced from Italy. They have either straight or curved legs, and 
are often depicted in South German Late Gothic pictures of interiors. 


The design of Italian decorative furniture of the early Middle Ages, especially in the northern 
13 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


part of the country, followed the same path as that north of the Alps, the origin and conditions 
of development of both being the same. But the Italian chests and coffers and turned chairs 
adhered to the simplicity of their form and solidity of consfrucfion much longer than those of 
the north. Italian Late Gothic decorative furniture was only partly influenced by the more vigorous 
methods of framing, and only partly adopted such methods and the panelling and plastic orna- 
mentation which had become common aft the beginning of the 15th century in furniture made 
north of the Alps. These features were restricted to districts such as Vienna, Verona and Lom- 
bardy, which were in touch with the north. It is astonishing to see the heavy, clumsy chests and 
chairs which were still used in Tuscany and the Marches in the beginning of the 15th century. 
In these localities the chief decoration of the furniture, which was made of heavy planks and boards, 
was painting and stucco. A number of Tuscan chests with figure and ornamental painting, as well 
as some with gilt stucco decoration in imitation of Late Gothic textile patterns, bear witness to 
this. Besides Florence, Siena was a centre for stuccoed and painted chests about 1400. 

The Italian craftsmen began to inlay their furniture with wood, bone and ivory at an early date. 
At first this work was limited fo narrow friezes and small pieces of inlay. Cosmatesque work in 
geometrical patterns of multi-coloured mosaic and marble which enriched Italian Gothic edifices 
has ifs counterpart in geometrical inlays of ivory and bone. This so-called certosina work seems 
to have been inspired by Persian and other Near East designs for furniture inlays; and the cenfres 
for its production appear to have been Venice and Milan. Pierced tracery carving, which as a 
rule was foreign to Italian Gothic furniture, flourished in Venice and its district; it would seem 
that the majority of chests that displayed a wealth of such carving, offen with the frame enriched 
with inlay, originated in Venice. Their tracery points fo connections with the carved furniture of 
the Alpine countries. In the district around Verona, along the valley of the Adige, chests and 
coffers dating from the second half of the 15th century are found; the fronts of these having flat 
carved or embossed figures and leafage in finely drawn lines, partly characteristic of the Early 
Renaissance style. Italian furniture like Italian architecture was only superficially influenced by the 
Gothic. And it should be remembered that in Italy itself the development of domestic comfort and 
luxury lagged far behind that of the countries north of the Alps, as climatic conditions and the 
requirements and habits of life were dissimilar. One should not look fo Italy, especially in Italy 
beyond the Apennines, for the wainscoted, low apartments of the northern castles and burghers’ 
homes, with their woven and embroidered multi-hued carpets, their cosiness and warmth. 


14 


CHAPTER SIX 
The Renaissance in Italy 


DURING the first half of the 15th century the Renaissance flowered in Italy; it was the awaken- 
ing of understanding and sympathy with the tectonic art of antiquity, and during the last quarter 
of the 15th century it greatly inspired the making of decorative furniture. The Italian direction 
of furniture craftsmanship as a result of the Renaissance, gradually gave a new phase of beauty 
to furniture in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, England and Spain in the first 
half of the 16th century. Renaissance style prevailed in Europe for more than a century, till well 
into the fimes of the Thirty Years’ War, alfhough there was a departure from the austere forms 
of the early period. 

The vital difference between Renaissance furniture in vogue in Italy during the last quarter of 
the 15th century and that of the later Middle Ages, is that the cornices, pilasters and profiles of 
architecture, with its new interpretation of anfique forms, are transplanted fo furniture. In 
contradistinction to a Gothic chest, which was simply a piece of joinery consisting of a frame and 
boards, the Italian Renaissance chest appears as a single constructional unit with a surface 
decoration of cornice, plinth and pilasters. The profile now begins to have an important rdéle in 
the shape of furniture. Indeed, the beauty of an Early Renaissance Italian chest lies in the fine 
grading of the profiles of plinth, cornice and lid, and furthermore in the fine proportions of the 
relief of frame and vertical members, which divide the surface into rectangular spaces and panels. 
The tectonic principle, based on harmonious proportions of elevation and plastic treatment of the 
surface, that has made the facades of Italian Early Renaissance palaces examples for European 
architects since the 16th century, also applies to Italian Early Renaissance work: but if is well to 
remember that the forms and ornament grafted from architecture and sculpture on to wooden 
furniture of the Italian Renaissance did not exceed the limitations imposed by the craft of the 
joiner or the carver’s arf. Herein lies the superiority of Italian furniture fo much of the work 
produced during the German High and Late Renaissance, and especially to the “ New Renais- 
sance” imitations in which the architectural fagade seems to be stuck like a mask on to the front 
of furniture. The vivid profile, moulding and carving of Italian Renaissance furniture require 
careful study as to details, in order to recognize how far the imitations of “New Renaissance” 
during the latter part of the 19th century lag behind the originals. The chief wood used in Italian 
Renaissance furniture is walnut, which by the application of varnish and staining acquires a dark, 
warm brown hue. The soft luminosity of walnut favours the development of that delicate relief 
so peculiar to Italian furniture. 

There is no doubt that Tuscany led in furniture-making. Florence, the capital of Tuscany, is 
the centre of the craft at the end of the 16th century; and for quality and output she retains the 
first place during the whole of that century. Florentine cabinet-making enjoyed an uninterrupted 
development from the Early Renaissance period in the last quarter of the 15th century—when 
Florentine sculptors, architects and painters laid the foundation of a new development—until 
the Late Renaissance period under the Grand Dukes. Particularly did the austere and restrained 
Early Renaissance style of about 1500 find unique expression in Florentine furniture. The finest 
walnut chests, unsurpassed in profile and construction, were made in Florence. Such a chest 
would have a high, receding plinth with steep contours, and flat carved grooves and profiles of 
vertical reeding; the chest carried by this plinth would be framed with corner pilasters or con- 
soles: the slanting top would consist of a lid with cornices and ovolo mouldings, in perfect harmony 
with the gracious proportions of the whole piece. In many cases the long front panel is painted 


15 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


with views of towns, pageants, scenes from sacred legends, and above all from Italian amatory and 
epic poetry of the 15th century. The panels were inlaid as early as 1470, whereas stucco 
ornament—much favoured by Late Gothic style—plays a secondary part in Florence in the 16th 
century. During the course of this century plastic ornament predominates on the chests. The 
front is divided into panels, and in the period of High Renaissance figures in relief, cartouches 
and trophies are much favoured. 

In addition to chests, the box-settle has a place in Florentine Early Renaissance. It is usually long 
and with rounded corners, generally placed against a wall; if is raised on a plinth, sometimes 
having a high back ornamented with pilasters, occasionally serving as a seigneurial chair. The 
state seats of Giuliano dei Medici and Philippus Strozzi are two celebrated pieces. The arms of 
these two noble families, whose palaces belong to the chief works of the Early Renaissance, are 
those most frequently found on the furniture of this period. The arms on one of the most beautiful 
Florentine chests in the Berlin Schloss Museum also points to a union of these families in 1507. 
Figures of angels, in the style of Mino da Fiesole, support the arms of the Sfrozzi and Medici. 
As a matter of fact, the fine contours and relief ornament of Florentine furniture of about the year 
1500 are distinctly connected with those of the marble sarcophagi and frames of the Florentine 
sculptors, such as Mino, Rosselino and Benedetto da Majano and their followers. A special 
piece of Florentine Renaissance furniture is the “cassapanca,” the box-settle with back and 
sides, the latter mostly ornamented with masks, palmettes or angels’ heads. 

In the Early Renaissance period the most common form of seat, apart from the box-settle placed 
along the walls, was a narrow stool; usually with an octagonal seat and supported by two boards 
with a back narrowing towards the seat. But the folding chair and stool, mentioned in con- 
necfion with Northern Gothic, were also much used. The typical centre table was oblong, sup- 
ported by two sfrong consoles, connected by a strefcher. The masks and paws of the consoles 
are reminiscent of Roman marble tables. Another piece was a polygonal, usually octagonal, table 
supported by four volute-shaped legs. As old Florentine pictures indicate, the Early Renaissance 
apartments, in the great palaces built round open courts, were bare and sparsely furnished accord- 
ing to our conceptions. Other pieces are cradles, pedestals, reading desks, and such things as 
picture frames and bellows. The chief ornament of a room was the marble chimney-piece. 
During the time of the High Renaissance (circa 1550) a novel piece of furniture, the credence, 
was introduced. It was ornamented mostly with pilasters and rosettes and was shaped like a low 
cupboard with two doors. Usually drawers were fitted under the fop. Then a writing bureau 
developed, the base of which is a kind of credence, whereas the upper part consists of a cabinet 
with several drawers and a middle niche. 

It was only in the 14th century that cupboards with four doors became popular. They are found 
chiefly in the north part of the country, in Lombardy and especially in Liguria, where the influence 
of northern, particularly of French furniture was felf. Since the High Renaissance the arm-chair 
covered with velvet or leather, with four square legs and a richly carved apron, was the favourite 
seat. In general, since the middle of fhe century, greater elegance and an increasing wealth of 
forms are noficeable. Pilasters with flat consoles and hermz; panels with oval or round rosettes; 
cartouche and volute frames come into fashion, the latter being surmounted with broken pediments 
occasionally. Scrollwork ornament is used more and more on pedestals and stools. But Tuscan 
Renaissance was always endowed with a sense of simplicity and restraint, by reason of which if 
takes a special place in Italian art. 

Besides Florence, Siena is notable in the 15th century for painted, ‘gilt and stuccoed coffers and 


16 


THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 


jewel caskets, and in the first half of the 16th century for furniture of fine profile, delicately carved 
—Barile was one of the chief masters of this art—and finally, in the latter part of that century, 
for richly painted furniture. 

Bolognese furniture is related to that of Tuscany. In the second half of the 16th century, large 
credences and rectangular tables of simple forms were made in Bologna, as well as round tables 
with baluster legs. Some of the credences were studded with brass nails. 

During the High Renaissance, Rome also became a centre for the making of decorative furniture. 
From the middle of the century, chests richly ornamented with figures and cartouches were made 
there, also long rectangular and octagonal tables with paw feet of vigorous design, and in the last 
half of the 16th century writing cabinets were also produced with similar heavy, ponderous defails. 
Among the latter was the famous writing cabinet belonging to Pope Paul III. There is no hiding 
the fact that Roman furniture borrowed its design from the ancient marbles and reliefs excavated 
by the Popes, and which were a centre of interest at the time. We even find copies from original 
Roman marble groups on the ornate walnut chests; as the Niobe chests in Berlin prove. The 
entire shape of the High Renaissance Roman chests differs from that of the Early Renaissance 
Tuscan types: the latter are governed by the limitations of construction and material, while the 
former strive to imitafe the Roman stone sarcophagi. 

The decorative element in Late Renaissance furniture predominated in Venice, as it did in the 
Late Gothic period. The convoluted tracery is often combined with Renaissance ornament on 
late 15th-century Venetian chests. If was in Venice in particular that stucco ornament was 
extensively used on chests and coffers of the Renaissance; such ornament often being gilded 
and combined with painted panels. Painting and gilt work, especially painted figures surrounded 
by arabesque ornament, were the favourite decorative treatments for Late Renaissance Venetian 
furniture. Besides chests, there were jewel-caskets, organ cases and so forth. Carving, which 
was similar to the Roman, was applied to large tables and chairs, with leather and velvet coverings, 
in the High Renaissance. But in Venice and Lombardy, bone and ivory intarsia in geometrical 
patterns (the cerfosina mosaic referred to in the latter part of Chapter Five) flourished during the 
whole of the 16th century. Intarsia work of light and dark woods also reached ifs culminating 
point (Pantaleone de Marchis) in about 1500. Genoa together with Liguria played a special part 
among the other furniture centres during the second half of the 16th century, because of the rich 
development of the four-doored cupboard, so rarely found in the rest of Italy. The four doors 
are carved in flat relief, and drawers are often inserted in the ornamental banding between them, 
and flanked by pilasters. These cupboards and credences, as well as writing cabinets of similar 
character with flaps, point to connections with the neighbouring French furniture centres, especially 
those of Provence and Lyons. 

Of Italian furniture in general, we may say that it remained restrained and simple, in spite of 
ornament, fill after the 16th century, and that the Late Renaissance style is not so sfrong an 
influence upon Italian furniture as upon designs produced north of the Alps. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 
The Renaissance in France 


NORTH of the Alps, France absorbed the influences of the Renaissance, and led in apply- 
ing them to furniture-making. The impulse came from her political connections with Italy under 
Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, strengthened later by the queens of the House of Medici. 
However, the common ground of the relationship of Romance races paved the way for a speedy 
acceptance of the Renaissance. It first appears in south-western French furniture, but from the 
middle of the 16th century it is the purest and most French in its interpretation in the furniture 
of the centre of the French kingdom; in Touraine, and above all in the Ile-de-France with Paris. 
The northern and north-eastern provinces, Brittany, Normandy, efc., were generally reluctant to 
adopt the Renaissance style, as was the case with the Flemish Lower Rhenish districts. The use 
of walnut in furniture-making gained ground from the south and spread to the centre of 
Renaissance culture on the banks of-the Loire and the Seine; whereas the northern districts long 
retained the oak they were accustomed fo, as they belonged to the same furniture group as Flanders 
and north-west Germany during the Late Gothic period. In this case it will be noted that vast 
districts of the same country continued to work along the old tradifional lines laid down by their 
cabinet-makers, and were uninfluenced by the style development of centres of culture. This 
explains why the most elegant furniture was made in the Renaissance style in Paris, whereas in 
Brittany oak cupboards and chests with flat carving indicate a connection with 15th~century 
craftsmanship until far into the 17th century. In Germany the case was similar; in the costal 
districts of the Weser and Elbe, in Dithmarschen and other conservative rural districts where 
local furniture-making traditions persisted for centuries. 

The French Early Renaissance, the time of Francis I (Francois Premier, 1515—1547), is the period 
when Italian ornament was grafted on to French decorative furniture. This furniture—chests, 
credences, Oressoirs, high-backed box-seftles, and so forth—mosfly retained the Late Gothic 
constructional methods, and was made of oak. The panels were offen headed by a depressed ogee 
arch. The pilasters and cornices, as well as the panels with arabesques, heads in profile set in 
medallions and modelled heads, bear witness to the speedy acceptance of Italian motifs in which 
the Lombardic ornament is preferred. The oak choir stalls constructed about 1510 for the casfle 
of Cardinal Amboise in Gaillon indicate the beginning of the Renaissance. It is characteristic 
and typical of the racial kinship that the Italian motifs were amalgamated with the French furniture 
forms. Thus the transition from Late Gothic to Renaissance is hardly perceptible. The finest 
Early Renaissance furniture, remarkable for delicately carved acanthus pafterns and heads en 
profil, came from Touraine, Auvergne, Normandy and the neighbourhood of Lyons and Liége. 
In the meantime, the pure Italian High Renaissance began fo gain ground in about 1530, when 
the Florentine Rosso and the Bolognese Primaticcio began to decorate the palace of Fontainebleau 
for Francis I. It asserts itself under Henry II (about the middle of the 16th century), and merges 
under Henry III, in about 1580, into Late Renaissance, which, under Henry IV, attains its culminating 
point and ends under Louis XIII 

The High Renaissance furniture made in Paris is the purest embodiment of the character of this 
epoch. The national characteristic is manifested in the predominance of the four-doored cup- 
board with slightly receding superstructure. Apparently this piece is a development of the 
double hutch, the armoire a deux corps, already met with in the Late Gothic. It is divided up by 
pilasters of austere line, or columns, and is often crowned with a broken pediment and projecting 
centre. The banded supports and cornices of beautiful profile, usually with gabled niches in 


18 


THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 


between and pendant flat masses of fruit and cartouche frames, betoken the influence of these 
French architects of the High Renaissance, Delorme and Du Cerceau. The latter published 
engravings of furniture designs. The allegorical figures in flat carving on the doors illustrate the 
elegant and delicate plastic style introduced by Jean Goujon, the sculptor of Henry IJ, and Diana 
of Poitiers. These cupboards of the High Renaissance—made after 1560—of which many have 
been preserved, are beautiful in oufline, with their flat carving, and the fine profile of the frame- 
work for the doors and the drawers beneath the top. The simplicity and purity of line already 
expressed in the best of the French Gothic furniture is still more pronounced in High Renaissance 
work. These dark-stained walnut cupboards of the second half of the 16th century are often 
enriched by marble insertions and gilded arabesques of stucco. 

In addition to the Parisian cupboards, a deux corps, mention should be made of the Lyons cup- 
boards, characterized by simpler forms and flat pilasters. There is a connection between this type, 
and those made farther south, with the cupboards of Genoa and Liguria. The traditional shape 
of the dressoir was retained in the High Renaissance. This piece was made in Paris as well as 
in other furniture centres. 

The French High Renaissance, which favoured an harmonious association of column, cartouche, 
scroll and herme, developed very highly ornamented tables. Long tables, supported at each end 
by fluted columns and with a colonnade mounted on a strong cenfral stretcher as an intermediate 
support, offered an opportunity for the development of Du Cerceau’s schemes of composition, 
both in Paris and Lyons. The outstanding characteristics of French Renaissance furniture, severity 
and restraint, are also expressed in seats. Chairs with four legs, and benches with simple round 
columns, chiefly of Tuscan order, arm-chairs with narrow vertical backs and narrow seats, seem 
to point fo a stiff bearing as required by the etiquette of the times. The high-backed locker 
chair, developed during the Late Gothic period, was used until High Renaissance times. In the 
districts just mentioned, the backs and panels are ornamented chiefly with flat strapwork carving. 
During the last quarter of the 16th century (circa 1570-1580 under Henry III) plastic ornament 
on decorative furniture is enriched; and caryatides and herme as consoles, ornamental and figure 
relief on panels, preponderate over purely architectural details; and even such details, cornices 
and so forth, assume more ornate and lively outlines. The Lyons cupboards, a deux corps, and 
sideboards, as well as those of Bourgogne, developed the profuse carving of the Late Renais- 
sance, reaching a high degree of perfection about 1600. The dates on such pieces range from 
1580 to 1619. In many ways these gaudy French cupboards of the Late Renaissance are akin fo 
their Swiss and Rhenish contemporaries. It is clear that the modern furniture-maker must be 
very careful when studying this type of furniture. 

The Queen Mother, Maria de Medici, Regent for Louis XIII, from 1610, was connected with the 
Florentine Ducal court, and that influence encouraged the manufacture of magnificent inlaid 
ebony cabinets to flourish in Paris from about 1620 to 1630. A group of closely related Louis XIII 
ebony cabinets with flat reliefs, incised flowers and twisted pilasters, seems to have been inspired 
by Augsburg cabinets introduced into France under the name of cabinets 0’Allemagne. These 
ebony pieces are important because they helped in the transition from the exuberant carved work 
in oak and walnut that characterized the Late Renaissance, to the decorative cabinet-making of 
the Baroque period. The ébéniste now leads in decorative furniture. The engravings of Abraham 
Bosse provide an instructive representation of Parisian furniture and furnishing in the period of 
Louis XII. 


19 


CHAPTER EIGHT 
The Renaissance in South Germany 


THE line of division obtaining in the Middle Ages between Northern and Southern German 
decorative furniture was also continued during the Renaissance. Southern Germany accepted the 
Renaissance style earlier than German districts north of the Main, owing to the close commercial 
connections between the great German Free Towns and Upper Italy. 

Nuremberg was the centre of Early Renaissance work in Germany. In about 1542 Peter 
Flétner, the designer and carver, transplanted the ornamental forms of the Italian Renaissance 
for the enrichment of the panels of chests and cupboards. The four-doored cupboard which, as 
will be remembered, shared the place of honour with the chest in Southern Germany in the last 
part of the 15th century, begins to take precedence in furniture~-making. Nuremberg cupboards 
in the style of Peter Flétner consisted generally of two coffer-like boxes; a broad intermediate 
piece with drawers in it; a plinth also fitted with drawers; and a top piece, ornamented with 
a frieze and a cornice. Gothic tracery is replaced by flat pilasters and friezes with fine, 
symmetrical acanthus patterns and vase ornaments; while the top has triglyphs, the skulls of 
animals and similar decorative details; the cornice having dentals and ovolo mouldings; in short, 
a decorative composition appears on the front of such pieces on the lines of the Italian Early 
Renaissance. The ornament, the graceful, grotesque figures, the medallions with heads en profil, 
have been borrowed chiefly from the Lombardic Early Renaissance cupboards made between 
1530 and 1550. The wood used for these cupboards is fir, which was also employed for their 
Late Gothic forerunners: fhe unornamented surfaces are veneered with grained ash, the flat 
carving being in lime or oak. 

Peter Flétner’s woodcuts of furniture, with their clearly defined Renaissance forms, had a fruitful 
influence on the decorative furniture of South Germany. By 1550 Early Renaissance details and 
ornament had been introduced in most of the furniture workshops, also in those of Middle Germany. 

North-eastern Switzerland, with her kindred race, keeps pace with Germany. It was there 
that the artist-craffsman, “H.S.,” worked along the same lines as Peter Flétner. It was he who 
constructed the wainscoting in Schloss Haldenstein, near Chur, in the year 1548 (now in the 
Berlin Schloss Museum). He also helped the spread of the Renaissance style by his woodcuts 
of furniture. The wainscoting, cupboards, credences and chests, in addition to being decorated 
with carved foliage patterns, have also excellent inlaid pictures in light, dark, yellow and brown 
woods, depicting in perspective details of Renaissance architecture, as well as panels with 
arabesques, either dark on a light ground or vice versa. There is an evident connection between 
this inlaid woodwork, the Lombardic intarsia furniture already mentioned, and the choir stalls 
of the Early Renaissance. The austere arrangement of the pilasters and columns of this period 
is characteristic of South German furniture until 1570 to 1580: Nuremberg cupboards consisting 
of one, two, or three parts are good examples of this. But in Southern Germany, about 1580, 
the plastic architectural details preponderate as in the case of French furniture. The columns 
and pilasters become heavier; the cornices more projecting, and banding more frequent. Small 
niches crowned with a pediment are developed on the door panels and between twin columns. 
About 1600, South German Late Renaissance work becomes mature. The wainscoting in the 
Nuremberg Peller House, dating from 1605, proves that this stage has been reached. The frame- 
work of the niches is ornamented with pilasters, tapering towards the base, projecting consoles, 
swan-neck pediments, lozenges, lions’ heads, and similar motifs. In the following decades, 
scrollwork is introduced, and (from about 1630) ear-shaped ornaments. 


20 





THE RENAISSANCE IN SOUTH GERMANY 


Apart from Nuremberg—Ulm, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Augsburg and Bale were centres of wood- 
carving and cabinet-making which produced wainscoting, huge ornamental cupboards, credences, 
chests and tables in the ornate style of the South German Late Renaissance. 

Strange fo say, in Swiss wainscofed rooms, credences and narrow washstands lingered on into 
the Renaissance. In Bale there is noticeable relationship with the elaborate Late Renaissance 
furniture of the neighbouring French provinces of Lyonnais and Bourgogne, already described; 
and as instances of this, mention need only be made of the wainscoting in the Barenfelserhof 
(dating from 1607) and the extravagantly ornamented cupboard (1619) from Franz Pergo’s 
workshop. About 1600 walnut begins fo replace grained ash as veneer in Bale and other towns, 
such as Augsburg and Nuremberg; and thus the way is cleared for a free development of relief 
carving. But intarsia is not neglected in the Alpine countries. In Switzerland, the Tyrol and 
Salzburg, dating from the first decades of the 17th century, wainscoting, cupboards and coffers 
are made, ornamented with pilasters and arabesque panels, light on a dark ground, and vice versa. 
Cabinets are the favourite field for inlay work. Both the interior and exterior of their doors, lids 
and drawers are inlaid with delicate arabesques, flowers and architectural details. The cabinets, 
with flaps and small drawers inside, are chiefly made for keeping collections of precious stones. 
Apparently, they have been inspired by Venefian and Florentine models which, like the Spanish 
cabinets, may be traced back to Oriental caskets of this type. 

The cabinet cupboard—a combination of a cabinet on a box base or stand—also developed in 
Southern Germany after the designs of the Northern Italian writing cabinets of the second half 
of the 16th century, especially those of Florence and Mantua. Augsburg was the cenfre of a 
flourishing industry producing decorative cupboards; an industry which thrived until the time 
of the Thirty Years’ War. But this is not the place to trace the development of this industry, 
because these cabinets and ornamental cupboards belong to the class of decorative court furniture. 
The earliest piece, and a very remarkable one, is the cabinet made in Augsburg for the Emperor 
Charles V, in 1555, with its carved figures on the base supporting beautiful columnar architectural 
details. The entire cabinet is covered with fine boxwood carving and inlay, especially on the 
numerous drawers. The decorative cupboards were not only of the greatest importance for the 
development of fine cabinet-making, but particularly for the treatment of ebony, for delicate 
carving in boxwood and lime, and for intarsia as well as for ivory, marble and mefal inlay, for 
the employment of silver and gold-plated copper reliefs and figures, for silver-plating and painting 
behind glass, and for various other branches of the Augsburg arts and crafts. The first Augsburg 
arfists—above all the silversmith Matthzeus Wallbaum—united their talents in producing these 
cabinets. Two of the most magnificent examples were made at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ 
War under the direction of Hainhofer in Augsburg: the Pomeranian ornamental cupboard in Berlin, 
and the cupboard in Upsala, presented to Gustavus Adolphus by the city of Augsburg during his 
stay there in 1632. The ebony cabinet (recently purchased by the Berlin Schloss Museum), with gilt 
copper reliefs in Wallbaum’s style and drawers with paintings behind glass from Wallenstein’s palace 
in Prague, shows that Augsburg was also of influence in ebony cabinet-making, which became the 
fashion in Paris during the reign of Louis XIII. We cannot discuss here a number of similar 
pieces of furniture de /uxe related to the ornamental cupboard—jewel caskets, state tables, state 
beds, chairs made of precious woods inlaid with ivory and silver, and so forth. The court of 
Dresden under the Elector Christian favoured these cabinets as well as the Munich court under 
the Elector Maximilian, and both the Dresden collection and the Munich National Museum 
contain numerous specimens. Nuremberg also produced decorative cabinets in the 17th century. 


21 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


The more delicate technical details of joinery which supersede carving, influencing the Baroque 
period because they mark the dawn of a new epoch, are first developed on the Augsburg decora- 
tive cupboards, with their skilfully made frames with “broken corners,” the fine mitreing, and 
the subtle undulations of wave mouldings. According to Neudorfer, Hans Schwankard is said 
to have invented the making of undulating mouldings in 1620. His son-in-law, Heppner, brought 
the arf to Nuremberg. The South German tables of about 1600 also prove this: they are long 
and rectangular with four legs, or multi-angular as well as circular on beautifully made central 
posts and feet. The chief seat forms belonging to the South German Renaissance were the four- 
legged board chairs with carved and pierced backs, revolving chairs with square or semicircular 
seats and backs with balusters, and folding chairs, the backs and seats of which were upholstered 
in leather or velvet. As in ofher countries, the arm-chair with square legs, usually with 
upholstered seat and back and carved apron, became popular during the Late Renaissance. 
Towards the end of this period turned forms, such as the baluster legs of arm-chairs, gain ground. 
In the first third of the 17th century, German Late Renaissance was at its zenith, for then if 
stood for the most magnificent expression of wealth and home culture, particularly that of the 
rich burghers in the great Free Cities of the Empire, until 1630, when the Thirty Years’ War 
entered into a critical phase. But another generation passed before the forms of the Lafe 
Renaissance were left behind, as is proved by the Swabian and Tyrolese ornamental cupboards, 
with their delicate architectural details and ornament, dating from 1660 to 1670. 


22 


CHAPTER NINE 
The Renaissance in North Germany, Denmark and Sweden 


OAK remained the favourite furniture wood in North Germany during the Renaissance. The 
use of this material and the retention of constructional methods and shapes characteristic of the 
Late Gothic chests and cupboards, stamps North German decorative furniture with a stronger 
national character than that of South Germany which was influenced by Italy. Lower Saxony 
in particular proves this by the Liineburg coffers which were still made as late as the middle 
of the 16th century, of solid oak boards, framed with vertical members on the sides to strengthen 
them. This constructional method was typical of 14th and 15th-century Lower Saxon chests. 
It is true that figures, often covering the whole of the front and usually depicting scenes from 
the Old Testament, are carved under the influence of the Renaissance. The Lower Rhenish 
and Westphalian dressoirs and cupboards with several doors and drawers, as well as the chest, 
proved the direct connection with Late Gothic framed furniture with carved panels. 

The whole decorative wealth of the Early Renaissance—the fine, flat convolutions of foliated 
ornament, round medallions with heads en profil, vases and figure reliefs—was first popularized 
by the engraver Aldegrever in Soest, who also introduced beautifully carved armorial shields on 
the panels of chests, an heraldic indication of the ownership. Late Gothic linenfold pattern was 
only gradually superseded, and not wholly replaced until the middle of the century. 

Besides Cologne, Muenster was a centre of Early Renaissance cabinet-making and carving. It 
was there, between 1544 and 1552, that the first piece of Low German Early Renaissance wain- 
scoting was made for the chapter hall of the cathedral. It was carved in oak by John Kupfer 
from Cologne. Other centres were Liineburg and particularly Schleswig-Holstein. A cupboard 
from Buxtehude (circa 1544) and some cupboards and chests from Dithmarshen are characterized 
by fine, flat ornament, and are specimens of Early Renaissance work in the middle of the century. 
In the sixties, North German furniture carving was turned into a new path by the Late Renais-~- 
sance ornament of the Flemish Netherlands, created by Cornelis Floris of Antwerp and his school. 
Superimposed hermz and caryatides enliven framework; figure reliefs surrounded by scrollwork 
decorate panels. An early example is Marc Swyn’s room from Lehe in Dithmarshen (circa 1568) 
with two four-posters and a cupboard ornamented with Biblical scenes. In Schleswig-Holstein 
the impression made by Floris’ ornament was considerable, because some of the chief works, 
such as the tomb of the Danish king, Frederick I, were placed in the Schleswig cathedral. Marc 
Swyn was a high official in the service of the king in Dithmarshen. The “Susan” cupboard 
(circa 1580) is one of the chief examples of Late Renaissance in this district. The oak wainscoting 
in the Friedensaal of the Miinster town hall with the ornament crowning the door frames and 
benches by Albert of Soest, the Fredenhagen room by Hans Drege in the Haus der Kaufmann- 
schaft (Liibeck), were all made at about the same fime. 

Preference for the chest itself even in the Late Renaissance is characteristic of the traditional 
element in Low German decorative furniture. Its front is richly carved. In Bremen taste was 
given to a consecutive representation of the story of Esther as being particularly rich in figures. 
In Schleswig-Holstein the divisions are usually marked by herme, with single framed pictures 
between. The exuberant development of metal ornament and scrollwork is typical of the latter 
district. The Flensburg carver, Heinrich Ringelink, and Hans Gudewert from Eckernférde, made 
the most beautiful chests of this period. Cupboards made of a frame with doors and drawers 
in Late Gothic style, covered completely with Late Renaissance ornament, sfill predominate. The 
corner cupboard (Aérnsqiapp) is in a class by itself. A three-tiered corner cupboard with 


23 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


one axis, sometimes with an additional superstructure, was very popular in the wainscoted rooms 
of the Dithmarshen. 

Generally, Low German furniture has a decorative tendency towards 1600. The doors and wain- 
scoting by Ténnies Evers the Younger in the “Kriegsstube” of the Liibeck town hall and by 
Melchior Rheydt in the Senate Room of the Cologne town hall (both distinguished by Corinthian 
columns and figure carving) compete with the masterpieces of South German carving as found 
in the Nuremberg Peller House (circa 1600). A peculiarity of both is the rich intarsia on the 
panels, chiefly convolutions and arabesques or sometimes figures. A considerable amount of 
furniture was produced in Melchior Rheydt’s workshop, especially sideboards and credence cup- 
boards with superstructures supported by caryatides. These pieces are covered all over with 
similar intarsia, chiefly in light yellowish wood. Inlay work in the style of Ténnies Evers is found 
on furniture made on the shores of the Baltic. Danzig in particular produced cupboards and 
chests with light and dark intarsia arabesques. These arabesques are light on a dark ground, and 
vice versa as they repeat the same pattern: an ornamental technique also found in Schleswig 
furniture made about 1600. One of the early and magnificent monuments of Late Renaissance 
intarsia in Schleswig-Holstein is the prie-dieu in the chapel of the ducal castle of Gottorp. 
Decorative furniture flourished once more in Cologne (circa 1620-1650), its expression being in 
carved oak credences, with upper parts supported by caryatides. Their vigorous lines, bulbous 
features, lions’ heads and lozenge ornamentation were influenced by the Antwerp Late Renaissance 
although the exuberance of decorative carving is alien to Antwerp furniture itself. 

During the whole of the 17th century, and partly as late as the 18th century, the extensive 
territory of the coastal countries between Friesland and Jutland clung tenaciously to Late Renais- 
sance forms and ornament. The wainscoting, the mulfi-doored cupboards, credences and chests 
of the peasantry in these districts were ornamented for generations with sfrapwork and scroll- 
work, though, of course, in very low relief. 

North German Renaissance furniture included chairs with four legs—each leg being a small 
turned baluster with square pieces linked by rails—and pierced and carved backs; types pre- 
dominating since the end of the 16th century. Seats demonstrate the tenacious adherence to old 
traditions: this is illustrated by the old-fashioned stools, chairs and arm-chairs, preserved in the 
houses of Westphalian and Friesian peasants. 

During the whole of the Middle Ages, the modest decorative furniture of the northern Germanic 
countries of Denmark and Scandinavia was connected with that of the Low German-Flemish 
spheres of artistic influence. It is in those countries that similar oak chests, turned chairs and 
early medizval seats are frequently found. Flat carved, Early Gothic pointed arches and animal 
patterns are common fo the oak chests of Denmark, Gothland and Sweden, as well as to those 
of Lower Saxony, from Liineburg to Liibeck. Special features of the Norwegian-Islandic districts 
are the arm-chairs and box-seats made of fine boards with incised convolutions, animals, dragons 
and figures. But nearly all these pieces originate from the time of the Renaissance and the periods 
following, just as the chip-carved furniture of Norway and Sweden does. The connections with 
the flourishing Scandinavian Romanesque wood-carving (i.e. with the reliefs on the timbered 
churches characterized by their band ornament) are more racial than direct. Furniture of a kindred 
nature with flat carved ornament and chip carving survived until the 19th century in the peasant 
art of the Esthonian and Latvian peoples; and even Slavic peasant art may be considered as 
related. Naturally vivid colouring played a great part in such furniture. 

About 1500, the makers of oak furniture in the few towns and seats of the Scandinavian nobility 


24 


THE RENAISSANCE IN NORTH GERMANY 


adopted the frame and carved panel construction from Dutch-Low German furniture. The linen- 
fold motif was also the favourite on Danish-Swedish wainscoting, chests, cupboards and credences. 
The linenfold ornament was often transformed into a flat, conventionalized form and interwoven 
with flat tracery and flower pafferns. There are but few chests and cupboards belonging to the 
Danish Early Renaissance. With their circular medallions with heads en profil and acanthus 
scrolls, they are related to the Schleswig furniture of the mid-16th century, only they are flatter 
and simpler. 

It was not before the Late Renaissance that Danish decorative furniture became more important, 
particularly in Kronborg Casfle, which was built for Frederick II, by Dutch artists in the style 
of Vredemann de Vries, and in the castles of Rosenborg and Christiansborg built in 1600 under 
Christian IV, Tilly’s opponent in the Thirty Years’ War. These works were the culminating point 
of Danish Renaissance. Inspired by the carved oak furniture made by Ringelink in Flensburg 
and Gudewerth in Eckernférde, some cabinet-makers in Copenhagen and Zealand started to make 
chests, cupboards with superstructures (so-called Skaenks), and corner cupboards (hAjérnskaps), 
with exuberant oak carving. Other workshops are those of Peter Jensen Kolding, the designer 
of the rich four-poster from Klausholm, in the Copenhagen National Museum, and Abel Schréder 
in Naestved. Interlaced ear-shaped ornament with herme is characteristic of this class of carved 
Danish furniture; but despite its apparent vividness, the ornament is restrained and stiff. Occa- 
sionally intarsia in dark wood on a light ground, or vice versa, is found. The patterns are 
mostly ear-like arabesques, similar in outline and technique to the Danzig inlay work of the first 
third of the 17th century. The Danish Late Renaissance style of these highly skilled schools 
of carving only decays after 1650. Late Renaissance still lives on as a rustic and commonplace 
ornament in the Danish parts of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, as well as in Norway and 
Sweden—then belonging to Denmark. The main features of this ornament are also found on 
Friesian peasant furniture of the 17th century. 


CHAPTER TEN 
The Renaissance in England 


ENGLAND during the whole of the Middle Ages was also a part of that furniture-making 
area of which Flanders and North Germany formed the centre. There, too, oak furniture of the 
framed construction, with Late Gothic linenfold and tracery panels, predominated about 1500. 
Under Henry VIII, Early Renaissance ornament was introduced after about 1520 on chests, 
wainscoting and so forth. The foliated panel ornament of the Renaissance and the circular 
medallions with carved heads, from France and the Netherlands, assume in English furniture an 
individual strength and clarity of form, even as the Late Gothic linenfold and tracery did. English 
furniture retains its natural and somewhat rough character longer than French furniture. It was 
only under Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) that the Renaissance completely penetrated England and 
superseded the depressed arch and the linenfold of Late Tudor Gothic. English decorative 
furniture shares this delayed development with that of North Germany. Renaissance forms only 
developed there at a fime when Early and High Renaissance already merge into Late Renaissance 
in Paris and the south. 

The strong national element in English furniture expresses itself by translating the exuberant 
and vivid Late Renaissance forms into staid and simple ones. The oak panelling in the Elizabethan 
royal palaces and the great houses of the nobility shows a regular arrangement of pilasters and 
cornices, with symmetrical rows of rectangular panels in the lower part and arcaded panels above. 
Ornament is sparse, consisting later of inlaid arabesques, and it is always subsidiary to the good 
proportions of the well-constructed framework. The English national style is expressed still more 
characteristically by the four-poster with a canopy, or tester, the much favoured credence (court 
cupboard, almery), cupboard and long table of the Elizabethan and JamesI period (1603-1625). 
The credence is descended from the Late Renaissance Dutch cupboard with recessed upper division 
after the designs of Vredemann de Vries, already met with in connection with the development 
of the Cologne cupboard with a superstructure. Table and bed forms, with columns and balusters 
resting on square pedestals were also inspired by the Flemish High Renaissance; for example 
the long table with its legs crowned by Ionic capitals and vertical fluting on the under frame, 
a type that supplanted the Gothic trestle fables in the halls of the nobility and in colleges. 
Sometimes these were draw-top tables, made with two leaves sliding under the central part of 
the top, allowing it to fall into place on the same level with them when they were drawn out. 
The clumsy, vase~shaped baluster form, narrowed in places by the lathe so as to be nearly cut 
in two, ornamented with fluting and acanthus leaves, is common fo Elizabethan and Jacobean 
furniture. Another characteristic is the very flat and purely ornamental carving on cornices and 
panels. A peculiar feature of English furniture is the combination of simple and restrained 
construction with flat ornament, such as sfrapwork, which is purely linear. One is also struck 
by the rough shape of Elizabethan and Jacobean seats, with their Late Renaissance flat carved 
ornament. There are long benches with backs composed of a frame enclosing panels, and arm- 
chairs with coarse square and furned legs and high backs richly ornamented with flat carving. 
A type resembling these arm-chairs is somefimes called a Shakespeare chair, and it has a seat 
narrowing behind, a narrow back and curved arms. But particularly in England, among the 
middle classes, turned chairs and arm-chairs were preserved fill this period and longer, especially 
those with rush bottoms and with high backs formed of three cross-bars. This domestic and 
country-made furniture of the time of James I, forms the foundation of the old Colonial type 
of the American Colonies, brought into being about 1630 by the emigration of the Puritans during 


26 


THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND 


the reign of Charles I; Boston being their first large town. Simple chests and credences with 
flat carving, long tables and turned oak and walnut chairs, of the kind just described, are the first 
milestones in the development of Anglo-American decorative furniture of about 1650. Naturally 
the utilitarian and simple forms peculiar to English furniture are still more emphatic in Puritan 
furniture. 

Oak remained the principal wood used by English furniture-makers during the first half of the 
17th century. In the meantime, walnut from the south began to grow in popularity, especially 
for turned furniture and sometimes for veneering. It was only about the middle of the century 
that the walnut trees planted in Elizabeth’s reign began to supersede oak. 

The difference between the traditional furniture of the home and court furniture favoured by 
the Stuarts, especially by Charles I, is greater in England than in any other northern country. 
Cabinets made of precious woods and inftarsia, as well as arm-chairs upholstered in velvet and 
studded with nails and edged with fringes, are found in the palaces and great houses built by 
Inigo Jones in the style of Palladio, together with Genoese velvet, tapestries and canopies, as well 
as Parisian and Mortlake tapestries. But the art of the period of Charles I—the patron of Rubens 
and van Dyke—already merges into the Baroque. 


27 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 
The Renaissance in the Netherlands, Flanders and Spain 


LATE Gothic furniture, with its framework construction and linenfold panels, originated in the 
Southern Netherlands, Flanders and Brabant. That locality preceded the Lower Rhenish districts 
and Northern Germany in the development of the Early Renaissance ornament. Brussels, Antwerp 
and Liége were centres for oak furniture with delicate Early Renaissance foliated ornament, 
distinguished by carving of elegance and richness. The carvers who embellished this furniture 
adopted the grotesque ornament of the engravers Pieter Cocke von Aelst, Cornelis Bos and 
Cornelis Floris in Antwerp, the most prolific of the designers of ornament as early as the first 
half of the 16th century. This grotesque scrollwork influenced furniture profoundly in North 
Germany, and other districts, from the sixties of the century. 

But the influence of another master, namely Vredemann de Vries, who flourished in Antwerp 
so after Floris, was still more important for the development along Late Renaissance lines. 
Differents Pourtraicts de Menuiserie, published by this master, turned furniture-making into new 
channels in the Netherlands, and all those places where furniture of a kindred type was made. 
It was only owing to Vredemann that an architecturally perfect composition with pilasters, bases 
and cornices replaced the Late Gothic method of constructing a frame with panels in the Nether- 
lands and neighbouring districts. His court cupboards and credences, beds, tables and chairs 
are ornamented with severe pilasters and columns in the style of the Italian High Renaissance, 
adapted to Dutch taste by rich scrollwork ornament, mountings, lozenges, pyramid ornament 
and carved consoles. The most pure expression of Vredemann’s style is in Antwerp decorative 
furniture made about 1600. It appears that the best credences and four-doored cupboards were 
made there. They are divided by enriched pilasters, consoles and herme, having bases mounted 
on bun feef, and such features as fluted friezes and heavy cornices supported by consoles are 
found. Drops and mouldings, offen made of ebony and applied to the furnifure, are also 
characteristic features. 

The distinctive feature of the Flemish Late Renaissance cupboards is the skilfully joined frame 
of the square door panels, usually enriched in the middle by square ornamental moulding. Four- 
post beds are preserved with testers having similar designs. Vredemann’s style also influenced 
the long Flemish tables, with legs composed of balusters, having cubes and fluted intersections, 
linked below by stretchers and resting on bun feet. 

Antwerp is the home of the Late Renaissance arm-chair which was so popular in the north. 
The legs of this chair were composed of alternating furned balusters and cubes, the latter being 
connected by rails. The straight back has a pierced carved panel; and seat and back are often 
upholstered in leather, two carved and gilded lions being frequently placed on the back as a 
crowning ornament. 

The spread of Flemish Renaissance style in Cologne, along the shores of the North Sea, and 
in England during the first third of the 17th century, has already been menfioned. The pro- 
gressive element in Flemish Late Renaissance decorative furniture does not lie in the construction 
alone, but in the pure and simple employment of the craftsman’s methods. For example, orna- 
mental carving predominates on the Cologne court cupboards (descended from the Flemish) and 
on the English Jacobean cupboards; whereas in the best Flemish cupboards the flat fluted pilaster, 
the cornice, and above all the regular, vigorously moulded framework of the panels with their 
lozenges and raised portions, are the really prominent features. 

The inlaying and application of black ebony, yacca and such decorative materials, greatly assisted 


28 x 





THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS 


cabinet-making, as was also the case in Augsburg Late Renaissance. Thus Antwerp Late Renais- 
sance points the way to the new and great period of Baroque furniture. And, indeed, it is difficult 
to say when Late Renaissance merges into Baroque in Antwerp and Brussels. The furniture of 
the house which Rubens—the pioneer of Baroque north of the Alps—built in 1620 in Antwerp, 
may be considered as a milestone in the development of Baroque decorative furniture. 


In the northern part of Spain, the country furniture followed the example of the French Gothic 

in the Late Middle Ages. In the second half of the 15th century, connection with Flanders 
influenced furniture and other branches of art. In the southern part of the country Moorish 
influence predominated, as Hispano-Moresque carpets, faience and files prove. 

Cabinets are a special feature of Southern Spanish decorative furniture. Their date of origin is 
chiefly the 16th century. They consist of a box with a flap in front, which can be let down for 
writing purposes, mounted on a stand from which supports are drawn ouf for the flap. Grace- 
fully designed metalwork, iron or copper, is applied to the exterior of this writing flap, which is 
also enriched by handles and escutcheons in which the Gothic “plateresque” style survives. The 
exterior of the cabinet itself has star patterns of broken inlay band work, reminiscent of the 
Moresque style. The drawers are most delicately inlaid with ivory and wood in patterns that 
also indicate the vitality of the Moresque element. It is true that with the dawn of the Renais- 
sance towards the middle of the 16th century, box and lime wood carving in Romayne work 
often replace inftarsia, though the decorative colour and surface character still retain an Oriental 
trait peculiar fo Southern Spanish furniture. 

The stands of Spanish cabinets consist of two supports of three columns each, and a colonnade 
with round arches between, similar to those on tables of the French High Renaissance. The 
cabinets with inlay and carved work, coloured woods, ivory, amber and gilt copper mountings, 
were still manufactured in the 17th century in Seville and Salamanca. They are much influenced 
by Nuremberg and Augsburg cabinets; and this is indicated by a regulation of Philip II (1603), 
forbidding the import of Nuremberg cabinets in order to protect home industry. In the 19th 
century this industry was started again. 

Portugal also had workshops where inlaid cabinets with metal mountings were made. The Indo- 
Portuguese cabinets made in the East Indian colonies and imported from Macao in the second 
half of the 16th century are variants of these. They were ornamented with delicate ebony and 
ivory foliage patterns inlaid in solid wood of reddish hue, and with pierced gilded copper mounts. 
It is here that European furniture craffsmanship has points of contact with that of the Far East. 
And the predilection of Spanish and Portuguese cabinet-makers for bedsteads and tables made 
of fine turned uprights, placed closely together, seems to point to Indian influence. 

Apart from inlaid work, turning, and the use of gilded copper and wrought iron, a fourth peculi- 
arity of Hispano-Portuguese furniture is the covering of pieces such as chests and coffers and 
seats with embossed, carved, coloured and gilded leathers. Cordovan leather was celebrated for 
furniture coverings and leather tapestry in the 17th century. For the rest, the furniture of the 
Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Mexico and South America in the 17th and 18th centuries 
were similar to those of the mother country—chests with flat carving, brass bound, and covered 
with leather, turnery, and so forth. In Spain and the other European countries, the state furni- 
ture of the court and of the rich grandees developed along lines remote from the native art of the 
country. And in Spain, naturally, connections with Italian work, especially Northern Italian 


29 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


Renaissance, were noticeable owing to the Influence of Charles V, and Philip II. Famous carving 
workshops were founded in Toledo under Italian and French influence, and the work they turned 
out belongs to the most magnificent monuments of High Renaissance in Spain; but it is chiefly 
confined to Church furniture. The covering of furniture with velvet enriched with highly orna- 
mental brass nails and rich gold fringe at a very early date is remarkable; and this applies also to 
the table covers and draping of interiors with fringed tapestries having cord and braid ornament. 
There are also Spanish Late Renaissance chests completely covered with velvet and embroidery. 
The portraits of Philip II and his court, by Velasquez, give us the best idea of the generous use 
of gold and silver, ornamental velvet upholstery and draping at the Spanish court during the first 
half of the 17th century. And thus again we reach the transitional period from Late Renaissance 
to Baroque furniture. 





CHAPTER TWELVE 
The Baroque Style 


WITH the advent of the Baroque style European furniture enters upon a new phase. What new 
forms did Baroque introduce in furniture? Where is it first met with? 

In answering such questions it may be repeated that changes in furniture style are not neces- 
sarily coeval with those of architecture, but follow laws of their own. This applies in the first 
part to domestic furniture, which is the chief subject of this work. The cabinet-maker and amateur 
of the last generation, when speaking of Flemish Baroque, thought of cupboards with heavy 
twisted columns and broken pediments; of sideboards with projecting cornices, exuberantly 
carved with fruif ornament and cherubs’ heads; of chairs with bulbous baluster legs, carved 
backs, and covered with dark velvet.... To a certain extent, this conception obtains to-day. 
The imitator of furniture styles in the late 19th century thought that it was possible to graft on 
to middle-class furniture architectural forms fostered under the influence of Rubens and echoed 
by the stately choir stalls and pulpits of the Antwerp churches. But one is surprised to see the 
austere forms of the furniture that is used so sparingly in the interiors depicted by the old pictures 
of Antwerp dwellings by Rubens, Jordaens, Gonzales Coques, and Teniers in Plantin Moretus’ 
and other houses. 

The novelty in Baroque furniture does not lie in a greater wealth of plastic ornament and carved 
detail. On the contrary, Late Renaissance furniture of the first third of the 17th century is over- 
loaded with architectural details and carving, such as the Cologne court cupboards, the South 
German ornamental cupboards, the gorgeous French columned cupboards of Burgundy and 
Lyonaise, the Schleswig and Danish oak credences faced with caryatides, as well as the English 
Jacobean cupboards, chests and arm-chairs decorated with flat carved ornament—all these Late 
Renaissance specimens are more richly embellished than the Flemish and Dutch cupboards which 
are contemporaries or forerunners of the Baroque, or belong fo that period altogether. With 
Italian furniture, the round tables on turned balusters and the large studded credences of smooth 
walnut from Bologna, as well as the austere Florentine ebony cabinets with pietra dura inlay 
of the early 17th century, all show a more developed Baroque than the Roman and Florentine 
Late Renaissance furniture, richly carved with cartouches and scrollwork, of the later part of the 
16th century. It is the Augsburg and Paris ebony cabinets dating from the first third of the 
17th century, rather than the richly carved Late Renaissance furniture, that show characteristics 
which point to the coming forms. The hard ebony favoured smooth, workman-like forms; mitred 
frames; undulating mouldings, and a certain angularity—details which pave the way for the 
new epoch. 

The Flemish and Dutch cabinet-makers were the most steadfast in constructing cupboards and 
credences with moulded frames and raised panels during the transition from Late Renaissance 
to Baroque. The importation of foreign woods, such as ebony, encouraged the skilful treatment 
of wood. It was not long before walnut was the wood most favoured for veneering, being glued 
on to an oak background as a smooth surfaced veneer. Flemish decorative furniture, and soon 
afterwards the new Dutch styles, had a revolutionary effect upon the furniture-making of Northern 
Europe. What is striking is the sudden appearance of Dutch cupboards with Baroque frames and 
banding in the middle of the 17th century, wherever the traditional carved oak style lingered— 
in the Friesian districts, in Denmark, along the Baltic and in England; the second phase of the 
Colonial style in the English settlements of North America in the latter half of the 17th century 
is also influenced. 


31 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDTA OF FURNITURE 


This important phenomenon should not therefore be connected with the Baroque style in archi- 
tecture. A formative element is active within this style which—in a wider sense—may be recog- 
nized as specifically Baroque: the formation of the whole piece by concentrating expressive 
details. Instead of breaking up the piece into a framework of small surfaces, Baroque has a few 
main divisions which alone are emphasized. Instead of many flamboyant surfaces there is an 
harmonious movement of the whole. Similarly we find that seats no longer have legs with alter- 
nating angular and round sections, but are made with baluster legs having a single motif prevail- 
ing. Another feature is the fixed upholstery on the seats, arms and backs, and later on cane 
instead of rush bottoms. 

These are some of the important points that assert themselves in Baroque decorative furniture. 
There are ofhers; for instance, the development of new cupboard and table types required by the 
changed manner of living. Without entering into details, it will be sufficient to state that the 
great change that took place in Baroque, turned furniture craftsmanship info those channels which 
decided its development unfil the present day. It is only when we see the furniture and household 
equipment of the Baroque period that we feel an echoing chord has been struck. It is only when 
we enter a Baroque apartment that we literally sense the spirit of those who once dwelt therein: 
it is only Baroque—and later—furniture that is directly connected by an unbroken thread with 
the present time. 

From what has been said, it will be clearly realized that the time limit of change varies in the 
different countries. As to furniture of the burgher class, the limit was first passed in Antwerp 
about 1620; soon afterwards (1630—1640) in Holland. Italy, the original home of Baroque in 
architecture, sculpture and painting, renounced her leading position in domestic furniture. After 
the Thirty Years’ War (circa 1660), Germany begins to participate in Baroque development. 
German furniture in the coasfal districts was decidedly influenced by the Netherlands. Together 
with the Restoration in England, English Baroque furniture begins to develop; it was also strongly 
influenced by Holland, and reaches a culminating point under William and Mary for the first time. 
The same applied to Scandinavia. 

During the same period Paris, a centre of meubles de luxe under Louis XIV, excels all others 
in the making of inlaid, bronze-mounted, gilded and caned sfate furniture. The patterns of 
such furniture, both for the varied kinds of inlaid work and the gilded Baroque carving, are to 
be found partly in the Florentine, Roman and Venetian meubles de luxe. The political and social 
power of the princes and nobility in the century following the Thirty Years’ War led fo the 
special development of meubles de luxe, which had already started in various places and which 
gave Parisian cabinet-making ifs peculiar character from the time of Louis XIV, till the Empire. 
But the decorative furniture and household equipment of the palaces and great houses of kings 
and nobles followed different lines from the middle-class furniture in Germany, England and 
other European countries. Naturally there was a great interchange both of forms and technique 
between state furniture and that used by the burghers. German meubles de luxe were particularly 
influenced by Italy, and later by France. . 


32 





CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
Flemish and Dutch Baroque 


I T was in the Flemish Netherlands that a revolutionary change in taste in the Baroque sense first 
took place. The outstanding monument of this change was Rubens’ mansion in Antwerp, built on 
his return from Italy after 1613. This master’s paintings, the interiors by Hecht, Jordans—whose 
Antwerp house was completed in 1641—Gonzales Coques, Teniers and others, provide an idea of 
Flemish Baroque interiors about the middle of the 17th century. 

In Flemish Baroque the remodelling power of the new style is chiefly evident in the conception 
and treatment of rooms, for it was in Antwerp that the interior was first conceived as a picturesque 
whole. There would be tall windows, divided into several sections, diamond-paned, shaded by 
shutters, and spreading a soft light; embossed leather tapestry, gilded and coloured with brown 
as the keynofe, having large patterns, or red Genoese velvet hangings also with large patterns, 
perhaps richly hued Brussels tapestry would cover the walls as well as panelling of stained oak. 
Vast chimney-pieces with black, white or red marble columns dominate the main wall, their fire- 
places furnished with brass fire-dogs of vigorous pattern, while above they are panelled with 
pictures in the style of Rubens, enclosed in black frames. In the houses of the nobility and the 
wealthy the doors of the halls are flanked by coloured marble columns, surmounted by pediments 
and surrounded by masses of pendant fruit, shell ornaments, antique statues and busts in niches 
and on consoles. Rubens introduced this style of door in Antwerp and Brussels by his engravings 
of Genoese Baroque portals (1622). The powerful Italian character of Rubens’ Baroque house in 
Antwerp was 'more pronounced on the facade, in the hall, colonnade and staircase, as well as in 
the garden with its ornamental statues. 

The decorative furniture of the Flemish Baroque interiors of this period (second quarter of the 
17th century) is at first but slightly modified as compared with that of the Late Renaissance. 
Types that predominate are the four-doored oak cupboards and two-doored credences, divided by 
pilaster and console, with bombé bulbous pillars, lions’ heads and bun feet. Tables with bulb legs 
and chairs with oval baluster legs are not greatly modified at first; but the generous use of 
textiles, such as ample fringed velvet tablecloths, as well as velvet and leather chair-covers nailed 
to the seats and backs, and often hiding the frames (a touch of Spanish influence), promoted the 
development of the Baroque style. In this connection aftention may be drawn to the change in 
costume which adopted the wealth of folds in garments, typical of the period. This change first 
took place in Antwerp after 1610, and it contributed to the widening of seats and chairs. Together 
with four-doored credences, low cupboards with single doors are a peculiarity of this time. Oak 
remains the most important material. Panels and pediments are made of ebony; palisander and 
other stained exotic woods enliven the stiles and rails and the repeat panels. Painted spinets and 
globe stands of finely turned black wood are common. The construction and proportion of fur- 
niture remain rectangular, with sharp-cut lines in accordance with Late Renaissance tradition 
until the middle of the century. It is only in the Baroque period that the banding, notching and 
chamfering of the frames, and the acanthus and cartouche ornamentation of the carved friezes 
acquire a more vivid character. A turning point in the development of church furniture along 
these lines is reached by the fine oak confessionals and panelling in St. Paul’s, Antwerp, the 
frames and embellishment of which indicate relationship with the Antwerp cupboards of the 
period. They were made about 1645 under the influence of the sculptor Artus Quellinus the 
Elder, who, together with Duquesnay, is the leader of Baroque in Flemish sculpture. Both 
transplanted Bernini’s style to the Netherlands. Quellinus also helped to develop Dutch decorative 


D 33 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


sculpture and carving along Baroque lines by his plastic ornament on the town hall of Amsterdam, 
dating from the middle of the century. 

Flemish Baroque decorative furniture rests on the foundation of pure Late Renaissance. The 
difficulty in studying it lies in the limited number of rooms which have been preserved infact in 
their original state and surroundings, and the scarcity of the furniture still extant. This is explained 
by the many wars that have been fought on Belgian soil. It has been necessary to dwell at some 
length on Flemish Baroque because ifs importance lies in the fact that it was a pioneer of the new 
taste in decorative furniture. 


Holland, together with the Southern Netherlands, was also a cabinef-making centre fill the first 
third of the 17th century. Vredemann de Vries, who introduced Dutch Late Renaissance furniture 
in Antwerp in the last third of the 16th century, was a Dutchman, a Friesian, as his name 
shows. And the sharply defined pilasters, the framework and plastic details of Late Renais- 
sance prevail on Dutch as well as on Flemish furniture fill 1630-1640. It is only then that 
a peculiar national style developed in Dutch furniture side by side with the rise of the Dutch 
genius in painting and architecture. The extraordinary development of middle-class decorative 
furniture in Holland can only be understood when it is considered in connection with the sudden 
change of taste and the ideas relating to rooms and their furnishing. The wealth of representa- 
tions of living-rooms, bedrooms, music-rooms, drawing-rooms, halls, kitchens and closets, prove 
that such apartments were themselves appreciated as works of art. The number of such inferiors 
has never been exceeded by any other country or epoch. The apex of Dutch home culfure and 
furniture craftsmanship was reached a little lafer than in Belgium: it is contemporary with the 
generation living from 1640-1670. In confradistinction fo Belgian interiors we should nofe the 
greater height of the apartments, the taller and narrower windows and doors, the preference for 
bare whitewashed walls, the greater emptiness, but also the greater airiness and more generous 
lighting. 

The marble chimney-piece with a wooden overmantel is the chief embellishment of the wall in 
Holland. The pictures hang singly on the light walls and are usually set in broad, plain black 
or gilt carved frames. From the middle of the century painted Delft faience files played a part 
in decorating fire-places and walls. In Dutch furniture, which developed differently from Flemish 
after the forties, the distinction lies in the greater simplicity of forms, the restrained ouflines, 
and the suppression of ornamental carving in favour of frames with planed surfaces, mould- 
ings and raised panels. A kind of wardrobe only made in the southern province of Utrecht 
having two solid doors and round arches with dentals, is the one piece of furniture that is akin 
to Late Renaissance. 

In Holland oak also predominates at first, though panels are enriched with polished ebony, 
palisander and similar exotic woods. In 1660 walnut is equally important. At this period the 
austere constructional features of the four-doored cupboards, with panels in square and octagonal 
frames, are prominent. The more elaborate pieces are inlaid with star ornament in ivory or 
coloured wood. Chairs now have twisted baluster legs, and tables assume a vigorous oufline by 
reason of their oval bulb legs. Writing-bureaux and cabinets with several doors and mounted on 
turned legs gain increasing importance in the last half of the century, together with cupboards 
having two and four doors. 

The chief merit of Dutch Early Baroque furniture lies in the purity of its design, and the rigid 


34 





FLEMISH AND DUTCH BAROQUE 


strength of its construction and turned details. The furniture of this most brilliant phase of 
Dutch culture in the time of Rembrandt was decisive in its influence upon the domestic furniture 
of England, Germany and Scandinavia; an influence also wielded by Dutch domestic architecture. 
Towards the end of the 17th century, heavy hall cupboards with copiously carved projecting 
cornices and banded mouldings are made in Friesland. Low seats, folding chairs, made of ebony 
or palisander, with arcaded backs, developed under the influence of Dutch colonial carvers and 
turners in India; developments already noficeable in the Late Renaissance Portuguese turned 
furniture. Another striking innovation in the first half of the 17th century was the introduction 
of hand-made Persian rugs, which were used as tablecloths, drapery and furniture coverings 
according to old Dutch pictures of interiors. But in the last quarter of the 17th century a new 
influence comes from the East—from China—which was of lasting importance for the future of 
decorative furniture. Between 1680 and 1690 Chinese lacquer furniture and wainscofing appear 
in Holland at the same time as Chinese porcelain. Strange fo say, the two-doored cupboard with 
many drawers inside is the chief piece of this class. Probably the majority of these cabinets 
dating from the end of the 17th century were ordered by the Dutch in China. The frames are 
exclusively native work, and are either of turned columns adopted from European cabinets and 
tables, or they are curved in the manner developed in Chinese tables, bases for vases and stools 
of the Ming period. The introduction of Chinese cabriole legs for cabinets and tables was the 
cause of a further development from severe Baroque forms fo more lively lines. But it was in 
England and not in Holland that this change bore fruit at the end of the 17th and the beginning 
of the 18th century. 


35 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
German Baroque 


GERMAN cabinet-makers were several decades behind the Dutch in accepting the Baroque 
style: it was only in 1660, twelve years after the end of the Thirty Years’ War, that Baroque 
was completely adopted by them. The differences in the character and design of the furniture 
made in South Germany and the Alpine countries and that produced in Low Germany were 
partly effaced by the introduction of Baroque. But still there are differences: decorative furniture 
in the Free Towns of Franconia and Swabia, in Nuremberg and Augsburg, besides in Frankfort- 
on-the-Main, or in Bale also, is different from that of the Hanse Towns of Hamburg, Liibeck 
or Danzig. 

The replacement of superimposed minute architectural details and scroll ornament by large 
columns and pilasters and fielded and banded frames, in connection with the general use of 
walnut veneer, is common to German furniture during the period 1660—1670. The effective 
inspiration gained by German cabinet-making—especially north of the Main—from the austere 
Early Baroque art of Holland is easily recognized. But the main line of German art, tending 
towards a more plastic and picturesque mode of expression, may be observed in the modification 
of the restrained, severe forms of Dutch Early Baroque by more pronounced curves. German 
Baroque furniture of the burgher type in the last quarter of the 17th century and in the beginning 
of the 18th century differs from that of the Dutch and English middle-class furniture in boldness 
of profile. | 

In South Germany, Nuremberg is a centre of Baroque decorative furniture. The Nuremberg 
two-doored wardrobes (circa 1660—1680) combine the carved ear-shaped and elaborate foliated 
ornament of Early Baroque (spread by the engravings of the cabinet-makers Untentsch and 
Erasmus) with the turned columns, the notched and mitred banded frame, and the wave mould- 
ings which were already used on the Augsburg and Nuremberg decorative cupboards at the 
beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. In Switzerland, Bale is a centre of Early Baroque owing 
to the work of Johann Heinrich Keller, the maker of the walnut credence with vigorous, twisted 
posts, completed in 1663; now in the Berlin Schloss Museum. The taste for credences and 
sideboards—among them also tripartite designs with superstructures—is shared by the Swiss 
Baroque and Late Renaissance. The heavy columns and the carved ear-shaped ornament are 
connected with Late Renaissance Bale furniture. Pieces of furniture with coloured relief mosaic 
work made of various kinds of wood and manufactured chiefly in Eger about 1660, form a type 
of the Early Baroque indicative of the desire for plastic enrichment. This Eger furniture con- 
sisted mainly of little cabinets with two doors and many drawers framed in black pear wood 
waved mouldings. By about the year 1700 South German craftsmanship had reached its zenith in 
the making of planed and veneered mouldings. The most magnificent examples are the so-called 
Frankfort cupboards, with their curves, and the wonderful play of light on the high polish of their 
mouldings and mirror-like surfaces. The Baroque bed of the South German burghers retains the 
form of the four-poster with a tester supported by the turned columns that were so popular in 
the Late Renaissance period; only at fhe head, foot and sides the framework is notched. Tables 
and chairs are usually supported by turned or twisted posts; Renaissance four-legged seats with 
carved backs continue in use. 

The furniture of the Hanse Towns during the period from 1660—1680 is immediately connected 
with its Dutch forerunners. Together with the last Low German carved oak cupboards, Dutch 
cupboards appear in the Hamburg district and in Schleswig in about the middle of the century. 


36 





GERMAN BAROQUE 


The earliest four-doored Hamburg and Danzig walnut cupboards dating from 1680 are charac- 
terized by a comparatively severe treatment of the columns and framework. In about 1700 the 
projection of the cornices and raised panel surface of the enormous two-doored cupboards 
(shapps) culminate in Hamburg. The upper frieze, capitals, pilasters and spandrel pieces of the 
pointed oval raised panels, and the bases with drawers and heavy bun feef, are copiously orna- 
mented with carved acanthus, flowers, fruit and so forth, The Hamburg smapps of the best 
quality usually have a continuous horizontal upper cornice crowned centrally by a modelled 
pediment. The pediments of the Danzig cupboards are mostly broken. The carvings on Hanse 
furniture have developed from the decorative sculpture of the Dutch school founded by Quellinus 
about 1680. In addition to: hall cupboards with two doors, single-doored narrow cupboards, 
also cabinets on twisted posts (often designed for use in corners) were made in Danzig. To these 
must be added linen presses, chests and Danzig flap tables, characterized by heavy spiral legs 
and moulded stretchers. The spiral leg also predominates in seats until about 1700. The heavy 
hall cupboard is found east as far as Elbing and K6nigsberg; west as far as Friesland, Westphalia 
and Hanover, and south to the Mark Brandenburg. In 1700 the beautifully figured brown 
walnut is offen decorated with plain inlaid ornament of other woods and ivory, star patterns being 
frequently used. 

In 1690 there is a new piece, the writing-bureau on a lower part with drawers resting on eight 
twisted legs terminating in bun feet linked by stretchers. Anofher type of writing-desk has an 
upper part containing drawers as a modification of the cabinet. These writing-bureaux—proofs 
of awakening mental activity—are copies of Dutch patterns which again have been inspired by 
the Parisian bureaux. They are first met with in the furnishing of castles and palaces. 

Towards the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, an important innovation in 
German decorative furniture becomes outstandingly conspicuous, at first in the equipment of 
castles. The curved cabriole leg replaces the vertical twisted legs of cabinets, tables and chairs, 
introduced, as in the case of Dutch and English furniture, under the Chinese influence. Lacquer 
furniture and carved chairs of the new shape are first found at the court of Frederick I, in Berlin, 
closely connected with English and Dutch models. 

Only a brief mention of the German Baroque meubles de luxe is possible. They first appear at 
the Imperial court of Vienna and at the Elector’s court in Bavaria under the influence of Italian 
Baroque furniture. It is from those courts that the most magnificent Baroque decorations and 
state furniture of Germany spread in about 1700, work imitated by Andreas Schliiter and Eosander 
von Goethe for the Prussian court. But this furniture partly suggests the penetration of Parisian, 
Louis XIV, ideas. The decorations and furniture designed by Tessin for the Swedish court in 
Stockholm are similar. 


37 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
Developments in England during the Baroque Period 


BAROQUE developments in decorative furniture begin in England (as in Germany), about the 
year 1600, when Late Renaissance finally disappears. The flat-carved, usually somewhat coarse 
country-~made Jacobean furniture in oak, gives place to simple walnut furniture, the product of 
craftsmen inspired by Holland. This happens in the Restoration period. The influence of the 
Italian and French courts mark the luxurious furnishing favoured by the reinstated monarchy and 
the nobility. Proof of this is provided by the state beds in the palaces and great country houses, 
four-posters ornamented with over-elaborate embroidery, woven draperies and rich fringes. Several 
of these beds are fradifionally connected with Henrietta Maria, fhe Queen of Charles I, who returned 
in 1660, and with Charles II. There were also state seats with gilded and richly carved backs and 
frames, upholstered with velvet and “petit point,’ high-backed seats; openwork, gilt flower and 
festoon carvings by Grinling Gibbons in London, as well as decorative cupboards in choice woods. 

But the strength of the special character of English decorative furniture in the last third of the 
17th century does not lie in this ornate expression, but in the development of domestic walnut 
furniture along Dutch lines. English furniture goes a step further in its utilitarian forms than the 
Dutch. Walnut cupboards and credences with flat raised panels in the doors and applied 
moundings on the pilasters were made after about 1675. The inner panels of the door were some- 
times inlaid with star and flower ornament of ivory, bone and mother-of-pearl. The Englishman’s 
appreciation of pracfical needs is already noticeable in his furniture types, particularly in the 
placing of drawers one above the other. Thus the cabinet becomes the high, narrow fallboy. 
The English also made a combination of a chest-like base on turned legs with a cabinet super- 
structure. Porcelain and china were kept in cupboards with glazed doors, mounted on stands. 
The restrained mouldings and entire absence of projecting cornices are common fo all English 
furniture of this period, as well as the elimination of all architectural features by flat, regular 
division of the surface, either by means of projecting bordering mouldings, or by rows of drawers 
one above the other. The escufcheons are also smooth, cut in flat, decorative shapes, with drop 
handles. The tables, like those of Holland, have twisted legs, but are fitted with drawers and 
distinguished by carefully turned stretchers between the square sections of the legs. There are 
round flap tables, with four pairs of movable supports, used as dining-tables, and eight-legged 
gate tables after 1688, as well as long side tables for dishes. Single and arm-chairs resemble 
those of Holland. Arm-chairs with high backs and caned oval openings, surrounded by pierced, 
foliated ornament appear. The curved arms and legs as well as the front rail are carved. The 
caned day-bed with six legs and slanting headpiece is popular in England and Holland. The simple 
cane chair is composed of spindles, decorated with lattice ornament, and stretchers, forms inherited 
from old English pre-Revolutionary chairs. Other pieces of furniture include stools and bedsteads. 
The material used is almost exclusively walnut, and for this reason MacQuoid classifies the period 
as “The Age of Walnut.” 

This decorative English furniture is also the basis of American furniture of the second Colonial 
style period in New York (taken by the English from the Dutch in 1664) as well as in Philadelphia 
and Pennsylvania, founded by the English Puritans who emigrated during the reign of William 
of Orange. Some furniture was taken over by the emigrants, who included some English cabinef- 
makers in their number. The simplification of forms is characteristic of the Colonial style. The 
important feature of this furniture is its domesticated, utilitarian and straightforward character, in 
the best sense of those terms. 


38 





’ 
: 


DEVELOPMENTS DURING THE BAROQUE PERIOD 


Under William and Mary (1689-1702), English Baroque furniture continued to develop its peculiar 
characteristics, culminating under Queen Anne (1702-1714). Three special features are noticeable. 
There was skilful marquetery work, which was a wood mosaic let info a veneer and not inlaid 
in solid wood: marquetery developed in conjunction with veneering. Black and red lacquer 
furniture was made in the Chinese manner, and finally, affer 1700, curved supports under seats, 
tables, cabinets and cupboards were introduced. 

Two groups of inlaid work may be distinguished. One, the softer variety, may be connected 
with the wood marquefery of early Boulle work. The chief motifs are flower vases, bouquets, 
acanthus leaves and birds, executed in yellow and brown woods and green ivory on a black ground. 
The older pieces clearly indicate their origin, namely the Florentine inlay known as pietra dura, 
imitated by Boulle. Writing-cabinets on turned legs, cupboards with four doors, commodes and 
table tops are inlaid in this manner. The second group has round and oval panels, or whole 
surfaces, covered with delicate, closely inferwoven arabesques—the so-called “seaweed” mar- 
quetery—mostly dark brown on a yellowish ground. This class of intarsia was used chiefly on 
commodes, cabinets and the narrow, long-case hall clocks, introduced about 1700. The single 
as well as the double chest of drawers is important in Queen Anne furnishing. The commode, 
which seems fo have come from France, replaced the chest and coffer in middle-class homes at 
the beginning of the 18th century, relegating the latter to the cottages of the peasantry. A characfer- 
istic of English inlaid furniture about 1700 is the complete smoothness of surface with a nearly 
complete lack of all projecting mouldings. 

Another piece of furniture peculiar to the Queen Anne period is the lacquer cabinet which 
makes its appearance at the end of the 17th century. It proves that outstanding Chinese motifs 
were applied by English cabinet-makers to established English forms. In construction, with ifs 
numerous drawers and ifs stand, it is the same as the inlaid cabinet. England and not Holland 
should be regarded as the centre of production both for inlaid and lacquer cabinets. As a rule, 
English lacquer furniture is distinguished from the original Chinese work, dating from the end 
of the 17th century, by coarser and more powerful reliefs of the gilded and silver-gilt decorative 
surface, and by the failure to achieve the immaculate, brilliant coating of the surfaces. Furniture 
is found with gold and silver or black, red and even green and white groundwork. In England, 
Holland and Berlin, stands and cases—pianofortes for instance—were decorated in the Chinese 
manner by means of oil painting and varnishing. 

The third peculiarity of Queen Anne furniture, doubtlessly connected with Chinese influence, 
is the substitution at first of the vertical supports of chairs and tables by curved forms. Thus 
the first step is taken which leads from the plain and restrained conceptions of Baroque to the 
Rococo period. 


39 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


Italian Baroque 


IN the 17th century Italy is no longer able to compete with the Northern European countries 
in the making of domestic furniture: creative power wanes, and with it the harmonious develop- 
ment of the craft. Florentine and Bolognese furniture in the first third of the 17th century is 
not greatly different in type and form from the work of the Late Renaissance. 

But Italy, the original home of Baroque, successfully influenced other countries in the design 
of court furniture and state apartments. It was Italy that first created those forms of Baroque 
ornament—cartouche, rich acanthus scrollwork, and so forth—which lafer on impressed their 
characteristic features on carving, especially that of the court furniture of the second half of 
the 17th century. Federigo Zuccaro’s ornamental engravings and those after Agostino Carracci 
(about 1600) started the movement which Stefano della Bella and Pietro da Cortona led to its 
goal. The work of both these artists inspired the Baroque style in Paris. It would be beyond 
the scope of this work to deal with the ornamental treatment of Italian apartments about the 
middle of the 17th century; although if might be desirable to do so, because this Italian art is 
the groundwork for the decorative treatment of apartments and meubles de luxe of the royal castles 
north of the Alps in the late 17th century. 

The first to decorate apartments in Rome about 1600—a gallery in the Palazzo Farnese—in the 
Baroque style were the Carracci from Bologna. The works of Pietro da Cortona in the Florentine 
Palazzo Pitti and the Roman palaces of Barberini and Doria-Pamfili, carried out between 1630 
and 1660, are the last of the Baroque period. It is there that a harmonious treatment of halls, 
apartments and wide galleries develops according to a decorative principle, which has for its 
main feature the accumulation of ornamental detail in the upper parts of a room, on the over- 
doors, cornices, and particularly on the ceiling. The rich furniture, console tables, seats placed 
along the walls, and cabinets, are designed to accord with the wall decoration. The plastic motifs 
of the painted and stuccoed ornament are graffed on to the furniture. We find cabinets and 
tables supported by heavy, carved, painted and gilded underframing, in which naked figures, 
such as naiads, amorini and negroes, and eagles and lions, are associated with scrolls, shells and 
luxuriant acanthus ornament. The table tops are made of coloured marble slabs, marble mosaic 
work, piefra dura and scagliola inlaid with stucco. Richly carved and gilded arm-chairs, single 
chairs and stools upholstered in large patterned velvet complete the furnishing. Mirrors and 
picture frames with their vigorous pierced gilt carvings, vie with the furniture. The court Baroque 
style of the Italian apartments and furniture, which attained its culminating point in Rome about 
1650, is of universal import as if is the forerunner of the Louis XIV style in Paris. 

In the second half of the 17th century the exuberant manner of Baroque carving in Italy is 
applied to walnut furniture. Together with northern Baroque, Italian Baroque shares the sturdy 
characteristics of good, honest craftsmanship, and expresses them in the construction of furniture; 
in the walnut veneer of the surfaces, and the division of surfaces by means of planed frames, 
mouldings and raised panels. The carved plastic ornament is concentrated chiefly on the pedi- 
ment, headings, supports and sides, as indicated by the Italian Baroque cupboards of the latter 
half of the 17th century, when cupboards with two or four doors supplant chests and credences. 
The main centre of this development is in Northern Italy. Excellent specimens of Baroque 
furniture were made in Parma, Genoa, Turin and Venice. Seats are also richly embellished with 
walnut cartouches, scrolls and even figures. Two important artists in the 17th century, famous 
for their carving, are Andrea Brustolone in Venice and Filippo Parodi in Genoa. A peculiarity 


40 





ITALIAN BAROQUE 


of Venetian furniture is the stool with scroll feet, as well as the arm-chair with low back and 
curved arms, the feet and legs of which are offen ornamented with carved figures. The Italian 
tables of mature Baroque in the second half of the 17th century often have unrestrained volute 
ornament with carvings and cartouches on underframe and plinth, as well as heavy balusters. 
But it was church furniture, the prie-dieu and chairs, lecterns, confessionals, efc., that were the 
most richly decorated with pierced volutes and cartouche ornament. In Italian Baroque the 
enrichment of walnut furniture by partial gilding is preferred. The inclination for coloured and 
brilliant decoration is expressed by furniture that is painted all over. Especially is this the case 
in Venice, where, by the way, Chinese lacquer work was introduced at the end of the 17th century. 
This taste for colour is also met by the insertion of cut or painted glass facets for the enlivening 
of furniture, a form of decoration particularly associated with Venice and the surrounding district. 


41 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
The Louis XIV Period 


WHEN Baroque middle-class decorative furniture begins to be made in the Netherlands, 
Germany and England about 1660, meubles de luxe begin to develop at the court of Louis XIV, 
in such a manner that they are not only supreme amongst the court furniture of the period, but 
are enormously important in the whole history of cabineft-making during the following century 
and a half. An exhaustive description of the French kings’ styles would take us beyond the 
limits of this book. Only some of the main feafures can be dealt with, principally those which 
are important in the development of furniture-making and the creation of new fypes and 
ornament. 

The meubles de luxe in the palaces of Louis XIV, and of the Parisian aristocracy develop chiefly 
from Italian state furniture about 1660. Thus the most important of the cupboards, the ebony 
cabinet with stone, wood and metal inlay, is a development of the Florentine Late Renaissance 
and Baroque cabinet. One of the ébénistes whom Charles Le Brun (the King’s Art Director) 
called to the Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne in Paris 1660, was the Italian Cucci. 
The stone workers, that is fo say, the marble inlayers, were also mostly Italians—Giacetti, Branchi, 
for instance—and one of the king’s woodcarvers was an Italian, the scu/pteur ordinaire des Meubles 
de la Couronne, Philipp Caffieri, who came from Rome from the court of Pope Alexander VII. 
His task was to make gilded carved wood furniture for the state apartments and galleries, among 
them “scabellons” and “guéridons” as well as- chairs and table supports. But the leading 
French Baroque artists followed closely the patterns of Roman and Florentine Baroque court 
furniture. Charles Le Brun, the head of the Parisian colony of artists, had studied in Rome from 
1642 to 1645 before he began to decorate the royal palaces and the houses of the nobility in Paris 
about 1660. Jean le Paufre, who together with Le Brun was the most influential master amongst 
French decorafors, and was originally a joiner who had designed richly carved wainscotings and 
furniture, continued to develop in France the heavy Roman Baroque ornament of the 17th century. 
Jean le Pautre and Le Brun exercised an influence of the greatest importance on Louis XIV 
ornament. 

From the beginning, the chief pieces of furniture among Louis XIV cupboards and chests were 
the cabinets, buffets and cabinets de /Juxe, medal and coin cabinets and low ebony cupboards 
with rich marquefery of multi-hued woods, and particularly of torfoiseshell and gilt brass. The 
furniture is enriched chiefly by fire-gilt bronze mounts along the edges and corners; required 
partly for protecting the fine veneer work. But on the more elaborate pieces we find figure reliefs 
and even cast bronze plastic groups. The leading artist in the true sense of the word is the 
ébéniste (maitre ébeniste) who, together with the marqueteur and the broncier, gave to French sfate 
furniture ifs special character. During the first period the three types of craftsmen are offen 
united in one person, as was the case with the Italian Cucci (1664-1673) and with André Charles 
Boulle. Boulle’s workshop, especially in ifs later days under his four sons, developed into an 
industrial concern with carefully apportioned division of labour. The same development obtained 
again and again with the great Parisian cabinet-making artists. Even a century later, David 
Réntgen in Neuwied, who was in connection with Paris, was with his hundred employees— 
including locksmiths, mechanics and bronze-casters—a manufacturer in the sense of the great 
Parisian furniture-makers, of whom Boulle was the first. Boulle’s earliest furniture—some coin 
and other cabinets—has marquetery inlay of coloured woods with flower and bird patterns after 
the model of the Florentine cabinets inlaid with piefra Oura. Bronze only plays a secondary part 


42 





THE LOUIS XIV PERIOD 


at first, as was also the case with Augsburg and Parisian ebony furniture in the first quarter of 
the 17th century. About 1680 fortoiseshell, brass or tin marquetery predominates. The patterns 
are cut out of two superimposed sheets so that two exact replicas are formed, the one in metal 
and the other tortoiseshell (premiére partie and contre partie). This is the Boulle process, which 
has made that craffsman’s name famous until the present day. The process was transferred from 
Boulle’s workshops to many others, and was also copied in Germany. It thrived during the 
whole of the 18th century, and was adopted again in the 19th century by the Parisian furniture 
industry. Furniture ornamented with metal marquetery and connected with Boulle himself consists 
of cabinets, coin cabinets and two-doored low cabinets of heavy build, with straight lines, and 
square tapering legs, made in the first part of the Louis XIV style period (till 1700). The ornament 
consists of large, symmetrical convoluted patterns. The bronze mountings and reliefs complete 
an impression of severity and magnificence. The carved and gilt stands of early Boulle furniture, 
like the gilt console tables of Early Louis XIV type, developed from the gorgeous Baroque forms 
of Roman and Florentine state furniture. Hermze, amorini, fauns and nymphs, volute-like consoles, 
interlaced ribbons and florid acanthus convolutions are the basic decorative elements of the carved 
furniture with which we must imagine the Galérie d’Apollon and the other state rooms were 
furnished by Le Brun for Louis XIV. Ofher pieces were arm-chairs of semi-circular form with 
cane seats and backs, or covered with petit point needlework or gobelin covers. Parisian Baroque 
textiles, especially appliqué work, aftain their highest development in the great lits de parade 
covered with their high canopies and flanked with elaborate hangings. 

Towards the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th there was a tendency to 
lighten the Louis XIV style. And it was this tendency that originated the chest of drawers, 
which became so important in the 18th century. It is first met with in the work of Jean Bérain, 
whose engraved designs of furniture, dating about 1700, paved the way in many respects for a 
new development. A new and important furniture type, first seen in Bérain’s engravings, is the 
bureau. An older type is the writing-table with drawers, having an upper part fitted with more 
drawers; that is to say, a development from the Late Renaissance writing-cabinet. The other 
type of bureau which becomes popular about 1700 has drawers on both sides in the lower part. 
Generally if is supported by eight legs, of which each group of four are joined by stretchers over 
the feet. Both types may be found in the furniture made by Boulle. 

The tortoiseshell and brass ornament on Boulle furniture assumes a new form about 1700 in the 
shape of a closer and finer ribbon-work. The greatest designers of this style of ornament are Bérain 
and Daniel Marot. Besides commodes, cabinets, and bureaux, long-case clocks with rich bronze 
ornamentation, bracket clocks and consoles, jewel-cases and barometers were made round about 
the year 1700 by Boulle and his companions. The really inventive mind, the form-creating artist 
inspiring Boulle and the whole of the Parisian makers of decorative furniture at the end of the 
17th and the beginning of the 18th century, is Bérain. 

The development of Parisian meubles de luxe in the later part of the Louis XIV period had a 
decisive influence on the neighbouring countries, as well as on furniture in the homes of the 
middle classes. 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
The Régence Style in France and Germany 


DURING the last years of Louis XIV’s reign (circa 1710 fill about 17355), the style of French 
furniture is known by the name of Régence, after the regency. of Philip, Duke of Orleans. This 
phase of decorative furniture-making, marking the fransition from Baroque to Rococo, is equally 
noticeable in the neighbouring countries, especially in Germany, and, in a different manner, in 
England also. 

The characteristic feature of Régence is the modifying of the plainness of Louis XIV forms 
during the later years of their development at the end of the 17th century. This change is noticed 
most in ornament. For this reason the Régence style may be best studied in the flat carved 
panelling that became the fashion in Paris in 1715, particularly in the salons and smaller apart- 
ments of the Regent, and in those of the hétels of the nobility. From there it spread everywhere 
to the palaces of the princes and aristocracy, and also to Germany, and even fo the Russian 
court af St. Petersburg. The leading features of Parisian Régence panelling—first developed and 
popularized after 1715 by the intendant of the royal edifices, Robert de Cotte, 1708—1735—can 
only be touched on here in so far as its forms are connected with the furniture of the period. 
The decorative characteristics are the curve at the corners and the foliage and ribbon ornament 
which encircle the inner edge in a continuous line. This ornament consists of curved and angulated 
ribbons with volute. scrolls, shells and acanthus leaves in severely symmetrical grouping. The 
beginnings are in the grotesques of Bérain and Marot, the two Parisian artists who also relaxed 
the severity of the heavy Louis XIV style of about 1700. Foliage and ribbon ornament also pre- 
dominated on Parisian furniture about 1720. The gilded, pierced and carved console tables, mirror 
frames, state chairs and fabourets; the inlay work of Boulle furniture, writing-tables, long-case 
clocks, commodes, of which several were made for German royal casfles after de Cofte’s designs 
about 1720, prove this predominance. In those days the furniture forms themselves changed 
fundamentally. Instead of the straight legs for the support of cupboards, tables and chairs, the 
curve is now introduced. It is very pronounced in Boulle’s later writing-tables, and sfill more so 
in the writing-tables representing the early style of Charles Cressent (circa 1725). With these 
Régence writing-tables in Cressent’s style, the upper curve of the leg passes without interruption 
into the adjoining underframe, which is likewise curved. The curve in Régence furniture is but 
slight and has the contour of a cross-bow (contour a larbaléte). This also applies to the upper 
members of the bookcase, which was then a newly introduced piece of furniture. Other character- 
istics are the thin bronze mouldings and frames enclosing the drawers, panels, edges and corners, 
as well as the legs of the furniture, and following the gentle curves and contours of the designs. 
The fire-gilf, modelled bronze ornament is concentrated at single points in contradistinction to 
the heavy mounts of Louis XIV furniture. Particularly characteristic of these concentrations of 
ornament are the female busts which terminate the volutes of the upper curves; these being 
called espagnolettes. 

Chairs and seats are also provided with curved legs, rails and arms. Their backs offer an 
opportunity for developing pierced carving consisting of foliage and ribbons. Among receptacles, 
the commode is by far the most popular. The name first appears in 1708, and it is certain that 
its invention was not much earlier. Probably it was invented by someone in close connection 
with that ingenious designer, Bérain. In about 1720 the commodes are slightly bombé and the 
legs curved. Commodes with Boulle marquetery, with foliage and ribbon ornament are very 
numerous. 


44 





THE REGENCE STYLE IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 


In Parisian Régence decorative furniture, ebony veneer is superseded delicately striped, light, 
polished walnut and rosewood veneers, and sometimes by mahogany. The high artistic value of 
Régence furniture and carving lies in its blending of austere restraint with delicate movement. 
An important factor about the Parisian decorative furniture of the Régence period is that it 
exercised a greatly modifying influence on that of the neighbouring countries. 


Actually, the term “Régence” is only suitable for the contemporary decoration of state apart- 
ments, and for the state furniture of the various grades of the German nobility. These meubles 
de luxe developed in close connection with the Paris Régence, either by the direct agency of 
French master decorators, such as de Cotte who furnished the castles of the Rhenish electors, or 
by the studies of German architects and decorators in Paris (Balthasar Neumann of Wiirzburs). 
The German Régence began to blossom about 1720. Its most brilliant monuments are Effner’s 
decorations and furniture in the Elector’s castle in Munich and in Schloss Schleisheim, as well 
as the contemporary decorations and furniture in Count Schénborn’s castle Pommersfelden near 
Bamberg. The celebrated Favourite Schloss in Mayence, furnished and decorated by the orders 
of the same Elector, has perished. Another monument of Régence style is the Belvedere castle 
of Prince Eugene of Savoy in Vienna; but this has been changed. Wherever a direct influence 
of Parisian Régence style can be traced (for instance, in the castles of Bonn, Ansbach and 
Schleisheim) the gilt carvings on a white ground are akin to the modest Paris Régence panelling. 
The German element is recognizable in the rich decoration of the walls and ceilings with foliage 
and ribbon pattern. The state furniture, matching such decoration, is often more lively than that 
of the Paris Régence by reason of its plastic motifs, figures, masks of fauns, birds, Chinese dragons 
and so forth. 

Austrian meubles de luxe indicate a preference for heavy curved, volute legs, showing a closer 
connection with the work of Northern Italy, especially that of Venice, as Lucas von Hildebrandt, 
the chief master decorator of the Viennese Régence, was in touch with Northern Italy. For the 
rest, decorative furniture with Boulle marquetery was made in Augsburg and Munich. 

German burgher furniture proves ifs national tendency by developing an individual style, based 
on the inspiration received from the Paris Régence about 1720. The centres of German decorative 
furniture were then in South Germany; the chief ones were in the capitals of the ecclesiastical 
electors in Bamberg, Wiirzburg and Mayence. 

The association of the writing-table with drawers and a superimposed cabinet produced the 
writing-cabinet about 1720, which was an important sfep in cabinet-making. The association 
of a commode with a tall double-doored cupboard and sloping central portion closed by a flap, 
formed the bureau about 1730, and was sfill more noteworthy. In 1720 the commode was in 
general use. The surface of the drawers was slightly serpentine. The pronounced fielded panels 
of the Baroque cupboard doors lose their emphatic differentiation of surface, and decoration 
relies on ribbon ornament in grained walnut marquetery; and this also applies to drawer fronts. 
Inlaid work in various woods, ivory, brass and particularly tin, develops from Boulle marquefery. 
Pommersfelden castle contains masterpieces of German wrifing-cabinets and bureaux with inlay 
work. The china cupboards from the Brunswick castle of Salzdahlum belong to the front rank 
of German Régence cabinet-making, about 1720. They are distinguished by the slightly curved 
pediments, ribbon intarsia of grained walnut, and pierced and incised trellis work. These cup- 
boards show the German ribbon pattern at its best, and deserve to be matched with Cressent’s 


45 







THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


bookcases made about 1725. The Augsburg engravers modified foliage and ribbon ornament e 
according to French patterns and made it popular in Germany. The furniture designs a 
of the ‘silversmith eaapp in Augsburg helped the introduction of the new cupboatdy type : 


with curved underframes and legs. ‘High chair backs with smooth wooden splats begin 
predominate. 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


English Early Georgian Furniture and French Rococo 


GEORGE ], ascended the English throne in 1714, and from that time the decorative furni- 
ture of the court and the aristocracy follows closely the lines of Parisian meubles de luxe, occasion- 
ally outstripping them in ornate carved ornamentation. After Wren and Vanbrugh (Marlborough’s 
architect), William Kent follows as the chief architect of great country houses in this period. 
Designs for elaborate carved furniture are also ascribed to him. 

But the chief activity of English cabinet-makers of the period was devoted to domestic furniture, 
the production of which had begun fo flourish in the times of William and Mary and Queen 
Anne. The tallboys, china cabinets, chests of drawers, tables and chairs are recognizable by 
the pronounced curve of the legs, which thicken towards the upper part and have hoof-shaped 
feet. The delicate contours of these legs, which indicate their reception of elastic pressure from 
above and the firmness of their hold upon the ground, show the tendency in English cabinet- 
making fo combine the useful with the ornamental. In about 1725 the feet are of the claw-and- 
ball type, a feature also transferred to American Colonial furniture and which survives in Chippen- 
dale chairs. The chair backs are high and slender with solid curved splats; the carving is limited 
to single sections, for example, to the knees of legs. Pierced splats are met with af an early date, 
especially in seftees. The influence of the Chinese curved leg is quite evident in England, and 
the flourishing period of lacquer furniture is also due to Chinese influence. 

About 1720 flower and foliage marquetery, which had attained to a high development in the Queen 
Anne period, begins slowly to disappear. About this date walnut also begins to be replaced by 
mahogany. Anew type of furniture is the four-cornered card table with curved edges and rounded 
corners; a type that is depicted in Hogarth’s pictures, together with the chairs just described. 

English furniture of the period of George I and George II shows a development of ifs own in 
a sfill more pronounced manner than does that of Queen Anne. This development is totally 
different from that of the Low Dutch furniture to which it is related, and was brought to per- 
fection by Chippendale, whose work first appears about 1735. What strikes one about English 
furniture is the great quantity of lacquer pieces. The connection with China dating back to the 
reign of Queen Anne led to a veritable passion for lacquer cabinets, bureaux, painted lacquer 
pieces, tables and even rooms in the great houses of the nobility completely covered with lacquer 
panelling: especially was this the case between 1725 and 1750. Lacquer painting on furniture 
and boxes became a favourite pastime of ladies in society. 


The modification of French Baroque decorative furniture which began with the Régence is 
completed during the reign of Louis XV, in Louis Quinze or Rococo style. This most brilliant 
period of French decorative furnifure, indeed of all decorative furniture, covers the generation 
of about 1735 to 1765. In the carved panelling of the early thirties of the century, in the decora- 
tions by Pineau, Leroux, Germain Boffrand, Verberckt and others, if is frue that the austerity 
and restraint of Régence carving (introduced by Cotte) is retained. At first it is only Parisian 
Rococo furniture, bronzes and silver work that are liberated from the restraint of Régence, and 
tend towards greater vivacity of contour and relief. The French master cabinef-makers, the 
ébénistes, the bronze workers, marqueteurs and sculptors were carried forward along the path of 
style development by Juste Auréle Meissonier of Turin who worked in Paris from 1723 as 
goldsmith, architect, sculptor and ornament designer. He is the father of Rococo. His numerous 


47 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


engraved designs for wall decoration, furniture and smaller household requirements, china brackets 
and candelabra, first introduced the irregular rocaille or shell motif into the ribbon and foliage 
pattern of the Régence. Thus a movement was started which finally supplanted the restrained 
character of the Régence by a receding and swelling play of lines and contours. 

This new departure was coeval with a growing refinement of taste which had ifs inception when 
Louis XV ascended the throne. This refinement of taste, home culture and decorative furniture 
was due to the feminine influence that obtained a dominating posifion at the court of Louis XV. 
Not only are the more delicate contours of the furniture proofs of this, but also the appearance 
of a number of new and comfortable types of furniture, such as the lady’s high-legged writing- 
desk with sloping lid and drawers inside, the carftonnier, a cabinet fitted with drawers for letters 
and with a clock on a high stand. Beyond these there were corner commodes (encoignure), small 
writing-tables for ladies (bonheur Ou jour), a small dressing-table (poudreuse) with hinged looking- 
glass, round and square work tables, and tables de nuit, etc. The greatest comfort is combined 
with extreme elegance in seats and couches, the canapés, chaise-longues, fauteuils, bergéres, and 
so forth. The graceful undulations of the delicately carved supports and backs are associated 
with light and charming colourings in the silk, tapestry and embroidery covers. Much importance 
is attached to matching the furniture with the wall panels and hangings. Chests of drawers, 
writing-tables, bureaux, and so forth, are not only enlivened by the lines of the curved legs, 
but surfaces are also bombé and undulating. The light veneering of precious woods, which is 
often enlivened by curved ribbon, leafage and flower ornament, or by square and diamond pattern 
in multi-coloured marquetery, is in beautiful harmony with the lines of the surface. The most 
complete plastic expression is given to the furniture by the fire-gilt bronze ornament. As the 
originals of these bronze ornaments were modelled in clay, the lively spirit of the Parisian Rococo 
could be most vividly expressed in them. This type of ornament reached its culminating point 
about the middle of the century. The austere mountings and ribbon ornament of the Régence 
are now completely superseded by the broad or narrow rocaille scrolls with flowing curves, leaves 
and denficulations on all sides, and which also rise and fall in reliefs and augment the light effects 
by maft and highly polished gilding. 

Jacques Caffieri (died 1755) is considered to be the greatest sculptor in bronze. His workshop 
was kept on by his son Philip until 1774. Not only commodes, writing-tables and so forth, were 
made by him, but also bronze candelabra and mounts for Chinese and Meissen porcelain. His 
name is connected with the best Parisian Louis XV bronze-mounted furniture (although it must 
be remembered that he was only a craftsman in bronze) just as the best bronze Régence furniture 
is ascribed to Charles Cressent, who, however, was only a sculptor in bronze in his youth. Cres- 
sent’s workshop was active well into the Rococo period, although the best work was done before. 
Furniture, particularly commodes, encoignures, bedside tables, etc., of black lacquer with gilt- 
coloured relief and fire-gilt bronze mounts, was made by those families of lacquer craftsmen, 
Martin (vernis Martin) and Chevalier, and was put on the market by Boudin. 

Towards 1760 the curved profile of furnifure is no longer so pronounced; bronze ornament becomes 
more restrained and is limited to the legs, edges and frames. The cylinder bureau becomes an 
important item in the output of Parisian cabinet-makers. The chief master of this last Rococo phase 
in which the first signs of Louis XVI style appear is Jean Francois Oeben—of German origin—the 
creator of the celebrated Bureau de Roi, begun in 1760. This piece of decorative furniture was 
completed by Jean Henri Riesener—also a German—the master who finally moulded Louis XV 
style into Louis XVI. He married Oeben’s widow in 1767, and continued the business. 


48 





CHAPTER TWENTY 
German, Dutch, Danish and Italian Rococo 


THE dominating position which French decoration and furniture of the Régence style acquired, 
chiefly at the German courts and also at those of the other European monarchs as far as St. Peters- 
burg and Stockholm soon after the end of the Spanish War of Succession, was retained in the 
period of Louis XV. And it was from Paris that the Rococo style penetrated to the state apart- 
ments and other dwellings of the court and the aristocracy. It bore its most beautiful fruit on 

German soil. 

The decorative furniture and wall decoration of the German Rococo castles developed after 
German artists had again got into touch with Paris and those countries and cities influenced by 
Paris, such as Belgium, Lorraine and Strasbourg. Such artists were the architects Francois Cuvilliés, 
Knobelsdorff, Couven of Aix-la~Chapelle and Johann August Nahl, the decorative sculptor of 
Frederick the Great. The Bavarian architect Cuvilliés, who decorated the magnificent apartments 
in the Munich casfle and that of Amalienburg about 1730, was the pioneer of Rococo in South 
Germany. With these richly gilded decorations, as well as with the richly carved mirror consoles, 
tables de luxe and seats, Cuvilliés belongs half to the Régence style of his predecessor Effner. 
By his copper plate engravings of wall decorations and furniture he accelerated the spread of 
Rococo in South Germany. In the decoration of the castles of Frederick the Great in Northern 
Germany, a cenfre of German Rococo decoration and decorative furniture is formed which can 
vie with Munich. Next to Nahl the Elder, Johann Michael Hoppenhaupt is the strongest creative 
spirit among the decorators, sculptors and wood-carvers of the early Frederician Rococo style. 
The mirror frames, consoles, chairs de luxe and canapés after Hoppenhaupt’s designs are, like 
the wall decoration forming the background, characterized by a delicate enrichment of French 
Louis XV Rococo plastic mofifs, naturalistic decoration that employs flowers, fruit and birds for 
its effects as well as garden tools, musical instruments, and so forth. 

Towards the middle of the century the fantastic forms of Rococo decoration increase to extreme 
limits. In Wiirzburg, Bruchsal and the group of castles built in the same Frankish Baroque 
manner, the work of the stucco craffsmen and sculptors coming from Bavaria, Swabia and Fran- 
conia is a brilliant example of this lavish Rocaille style. At the same time the Augsburg engravers, 
Habermann, Nielson and their fellow-craftsmen, indulge in a further extravagant development 
of the scroll ornament, and inspire the mid-18th century burgher decorative furniture of South 
Germany by their designs. German Rococo begins to be more restrained, less unbridled, in the 
decade between 1760 and 1770. A northern example is the furnishing and decorating of the 
New Palace in Potsdam by Frederick the Great after the Seven Years’ War, and a southern one 
is found in the Solitude near Stuttgart. It should be noted here that the Rococo meubles de luxe 
namely the fine bronze-mounted cabinets inlaid with marquetery, the commodes, writing-tables, 
secrétaires, cartonniers, long-case clocks, and so forth, nearly all came from Paris, including those 
in Munich, Potsdam, Wilhelmsthal and in the electors’ castles on the Rhine and Main. 

German domestic cabinet-making—in accordance with its principles—completely absorbed the 
inspirations of the French decorative furniture industry. A proof of this is given by the type 
of the bureaux, which now became the chief examples of the cabinet-maker’s craft. This com- 
bination of chest of drawers with a cabinet upper part had been modified at the beginning of the 
Rococo period by a recessed intermediate piece having drawers and pigeon-holes inside, and a 
sloping writing flap. The creative mastery of form is vividly expressed by the German Rococo 
cabinet-makers in their skilful fusion of these three parts of the bureau by means of a unifying 


E 49 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


continuity of plastic ornament. The surfaces are now bombé, and in particular the commode-like 
base is bulged, the corners chamfered, and even the cornice participates in the graceful play of 
the lines. Marquetery patterns, lozenge and cube, increase the light effect, and carved rocaille 
ornament, generally of restrained character, save for a certain lavishness on the pediment and 
curved legs, completes the artistic effect of the whole design. A china cabinet with glazed doors 
in the upper part is similar in shape. The finest pieces of this sort were made in Wiirzburg and 
Mayence. The large heavy hall cupboard of the coastal towns was much slower in its develop- 
ment. The Rococo features of this piece of furniture are limited to the pediment and sparse, 
carved ornament. The oak furniture of Liége and Aix-la-Chapelle, with its fine relief carving, 
belongs to a special group. The chief pieces are cupboards with two and three doors and glazed 
upper parts, narrow corner cabinets, hall clocks, tables, chairs, and chests of drawers. Seats 
of the middle class type do not differ much from Dutch and the simpler English types. Bavaria 
and Austria favour brightly coloured carved furniture. 

Dutch Rococo furniture is distinguished by more restrained lines and greater compactness; the 
large combined cupboards and trellis patterned glazed upper part, and bold walnut or mahogany 
veneered curved pediments and contours are characteristic. Danish Rococo is similar, only the 
lines are more restrained, and English forms were an early source of inspiration. 

To a certain extent, Italian Rococo holds a place of its own. It attained its greatest beauty in 
Vienna. The lavish gilt carving of the vigorous volutes and cartouches, which had become 
popular in Late Baroque, is interlaced with foliage and blowing ribbons, and later with irregular 
rocaille work. In addition to gilding, painting and the enrichment of ornament by means of cut 
and painted mirrors, play a part in wall decoration and furniture. In the first third of the 18th 
century an extensive lacquer furniture industry developed in Venice. During the Rococo period 
Chinese patterns are superseded by painted flower ornament, landscapes and figures in the native 
style on light blue and other coloured grounds, framed by gilded scroll ornament in high relief. 
Bombé commodes, curved tripods, and double-doored Venetian cupboards were made until about 
1770. Italian Rococo is characterized by its pronounced decorative and picturesque tendencies. 





| 
| 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 
Chippendale’s Influence in England and North America 


ENGLISH cabinet-making in the Rococo period is distinguished from that of the Continent 
by ifs intensely individual character. And it acquires its character very largely from the work of 
Thomas Chippendale. 

This craftsman was originally a carver who turned to cabinef-making in 1735 and exercised a 
great influence on English, American, Colonial and Dutch furniture, as well as on the work of the 
countries on the North Sea and the Baltic; an influence spread largely by his book, The Gentleman 
and Cabinet-maker’s Director, which was published in 1754. 

In studying the general connections of furniture styles, the fact cannot be overlooked that Chippen- 
dale, however intimately he is connected with English tradition of the Georgian period, nevertheless 
keeps abreast of the general Rococo movement. His oldest chairs (1735) have the same claw- 
and-ball feet and cabriole legs as those of the transitional Queen Anne types, but the influence 
of French rocaille is not to be mistaken in the pierced arms and backs. Chippendale produced 
masterly blendings of the French Rococo shell and scroll ornament with the peculiar and capricious 
play of line that distinguished his own furniture. Besides chairs, presenting an almost endless 
variety of patterns in the lattice detail of the backs, he designed seftees, canapés with curved 
backs and legs, grandfather clock-cases, canopied bedsteads, china cases and glazed cabinets 
with delicate lattice work; writing-tables, and also dressing chests and tallboys. The main features 
of the furniture are at first hardly different from those of the first half of the 18th century, 
with the exception of the Rococo ornament on the edges, the bend of the legs and the curved 
pediments. 

Chippendale furniture—of which but a limited amount originated in his workshops, the rest 
being copied from his designs—is nearly always made of mahogany, and nearly exclusively of 
solid mahogany. The most striking ornamental motifs, together with those of the Rococo, are 
Gothic and Chinese. These details, chiefly employed as lattice and trellis work, are connected 
with the aftempts made by English artists to introduce Gothic and Chinese motifs into archi- 
tecture. Batty and Thomas Langly’s work (1742) is the first example of the Gothic pattern; that of 
William and John Halfpenny (1750-1752) of the Chinese patterns. The furniture designs of the 
cabinet-maker Lock (1748) already show Rococo scrollwork intermingled with Chinese frellis work. 
Chippendale’s example was followed by publications devoted to designs by the furniture firm 
of Ince and Mayhew, who published a Universal System of Household Furniture, 1762: the sale 
catalogue of the Society of Upholsterers and Cabinet-makers also appeared (1763), and finally 
The Real Friend, published by the cabinet-maker Manwaring. 

In North America, cabinet-makers also follow Chippendale—for instance, Thomas and the cabinet 
and glass-maker John Elliot in Philadelphia, circa 1760-1770. 

Chippendale’s later works have straight contours. The tables and sideboards have square legs 
that do not taper at the bottom, and have Chinese lattice work in the brackets. A new type of 
Chinese furniture with patterns of round lattices in the fashion of Chinese cane furniture was 
introduced by the architect Chambers in 1770 and became very popular. 


51 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 
The Louis Seize Style in France 


LOUIS XV Parisian furniture, with its curved forms and lively decorations, was simplified 
about 1765, shortly after the Seven Years’ War. It was soon superseded by furniture with straight 
lines and sections, which represented the beginning of the style of Louis Seize, which matures 
in the reign of Louis XVI, 1774-1789. The characteristic feature of the furniture of this style 
is the pronounced constructional element, the emphasis laid on vertical and horizontal members. 
For example, the legs of a commode, a writing-table or a chair of Louis XV style are curved, 
and where the legs are joined to the body of a piece the curve is continued in the under frame; 
there is no division, but a continuity of line; the piece is a harmonious whole: but the Louis XVI 
cabinet-maker considers that if is important to recognize the function of supports. Legs are 
either round or square and tapering towards the foot, emphasizing their support of the piece of 
furniture at the upper part by a cornice, capital or cube, while the feet, which are distinct in 
profile from the legs, serve to express the grip of the piece on the floor. Fluting and grooving 
frequently assist in emphasizing the vertical line of the support. The idea is continued in the 
pilasters and framework. The right angle now dominates. The panels and drawers on the fronts 
of commodes and writing-cabinets are enclosed by rectangular frames. This modification of taste 
is connected with the return of architecture and inferior decoration to the tectonic laws of antique 
construction, and with the desire to regain clear, linear spacing after the undisciplined play of 
the capricious Rococo line. Therefore this style is also called Classicism. But this phase of Early 
Classicism is in many ways akin to the preceding Louis XV work in feeling and treatment. Till 
the close of the 18th century decorative furniture remains connected with the best arfistic traditions 
of the preceding generations. 

Riesener’s early works (1770) are the best illustration of the transition from the latest phase of 
Rococo to Louis XVI in Paris. The mahogany cylinder bureaux and the marquetery commodes 
of Riesener’s first manner still have the slightly curved legs and underframes met with in the 
bureau du roi begun by Oben in 1760 and completed by his successor, 1763-1769. The undulating 
line and plastic movement of Late Louis Quinze style still lingers, albeit modified, in the bronze 
mounts on the legs and edges of furniture. The flat, or only slightly curved, surfaces of the 
furniture and some straight mounts and friezes, as well as torsades (twisted rope or cord deco- 
ration) already point to an emancipation from the tendencies of Louis XV. In the middle of the 
seventies, at the time of Louis XVI’s ascension to the throne, the principles of the new style 
alone predominate, as shown by the furniture of Riesener’s second manner. The commodes, 
writing-tables, ladies’ bureaux and secrétaires are bounded by level surfaces; cornices, mounts 
on the side, and feet, are all straight; the bronze mounts are limited to the supports and prominent 
divisional features and frames, and their contours accord with antique patterns. The ornamental 
motifs include festoons, staffs entwined with laurel, acanthus leaves, bows and rosettes. On the 
richer pieces are found square or oval plaques in relief of fire-gilt bronze, suspended by ribbons 
in the middle of the panels. Mahogany becomes the favourite veneer, and is often ornamented 
with marquetery of rosewood, tulipwood and other rare exotic woods, arranged as lozenge and 
diamond patterns on the panels. The edges are often veneered with cedar, palisander and ebony. 
Flower marquetery patterns of light and dark woods are frequently a distinguishing feature of 
Riesener’s furniture. 

During the Louis Seize period, black and gold lacquer furniture with gilt bronze ornament 
was also made. During the last period of Louis Seize style, the graceful furniture designed for 


22 





THE LOUIS SEIZE STYLE IN FRANCE 


the use of ladies was ornamented with painted Sévres china plaques, with Sévres bisque reliefs— 
white on a blue ground—or Wedgewood plaques. During the later part of the Louis Seize 
period, Boulle marquetery of tortoiseshell and brass with ebony veneering came into fashion 
again for the more richly decorated commodes and cabinets. It is sometimes very difficult to 
distinguish whether a piece of Boulle furniture belongs to the Louis Seize or Louis Quatorze 
period. 

The number of individual master craftsmen in the Louis Seize period is greater than ever. The 
chief besides Riesener were Benenmann, Leleu, Roussel, Weissweiler, Dubois, Schwerdfeger, 
Bondin and Jacob. The activity of the latter continued long after the period. The great masters 
were often also great entrepreneurs and owners of furnishing and decorating establishments. The 
stamps on the furniture do not always denote the originator. They were often affixed by the 
dealer over stamps already put on by the masters. 

The most prominent of the bronze casters in the Late Louis Seize period was Gouthiére. The 
style displayed in plastic relief was influenced by Clodion. The connection with Louis Quinze 
is also expressed in the numerous small furnishings for ladies’ boudoirs; and among these great 
ladies, Marie Antoinette herself was the most refined and elegant. The chief of these pieces was 
the high rectangular secrétaire. The commode is enlarged to a commode éfagére by adding 
rounded shelves to the sides. The writing-table for ladies, known as the bonheur du jour, receives 
a rectangular upper part, the panels of which imitate book backs. The greatest delicacy of form 
is expressed in the little round work tables, usually three-legged, having shelves between the legs. 
Different forms of rectangular tables with shelves are also common. The carved tables and seats 
harmonize with the carved Louis Seize panels. The flat carved ornament is gilded or lacquered 
white. The upholstery is covered with Gobelins or Beauvais tapestries, silk needle-work and 
fabrics in delicate patterns with light coloured floral devices. 


53 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 
Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton Furniture in England 


ENGLAND reached the zenith of her national furniture style during the last third of the 18th 
century. Robert Adam, an architect, is the pioneer of Classicism in about 1770. The work of 
this designer replaced the Rococo of Chippendale—if it may be referred to in this manner—and 
his decorative treatment of interiors, and his engravings of wall decoration and furniture, in- 
dicated a more logical employment of the classic straight line than is found in the work of 
contemporary Continental architects. 

Furniture designed by Adam was made for the great houses of the aristocracy and the wealthy 
commercial classes. It is distinguished by delicate carving. Gilded and painted console tables, 
side tables, sofas and arm-chairs, as well as painted chests of drawers and cabinets, were made 
after Adam’s designs. No other English designer expressed the specifically English features better 
than he did in the clarity of outline, the tapering legs, the flat carved festoons, oval rosettes, 
floral devices, and especially in the rows of vertical palm-leaf ornament and fluting in the Louis 
Seize style. 

Adam’s painted furniture forms a particularly beautiful group of its own. The first to introduce 
paintings on English furniture were Italians: Pergolesi, whom Adam brought back with him from 
Italy, Cipriani, Zucchi, and Angelica Kaufmann, who left Rome in 1765 and settled in England, 
where she painted walls and furniture for Adam. But these clearly drawn, delicately lined, round 
and oval medallions, these fine trophies and festoons on the slightly curved, semi-circular com- 
modes and sideboards by Adam, are, nevertheless, very English in appearance. Strange to say, 
Chippendale made furniture after designs by Adam in Louis Seize style towards the end of his 
life (circa 1768) for Osterley and Harewood, for instance. 

Adam and his brother founded a sort of furniture establishment which enabled them to under- 
take the complete furnishing and decorating of houses. Those cabinet-makers who enabled the 
trade to adopt Adam’s style were George Hepplewhite—who flourished 1775-1786—and Thomas 
Sheraton, whose chief period of activity lay between 1790 and 1804. These two masters exercised 
great influence by their designs, especially on the forms of English domestic furniture. Hence 
their names are associated with the furniture styles following that of Chippendale. Hepplewhite’s 
style follows Chippendale’s about 1775 and corresponds with Louis Seize. In 1790 Sheraton’s 
style succeeds and stands for pure Classicism. Of course, such style designations are only appro- 
ximate: in the rarest cases only will it be found that pieces known as Hepplewhite and Sheraton 
actually came from their workshops. Hepplewhite has given expression to his ideas in his book, 
The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, which was published in 1788, after his death. Hepple- 
white furniture, in contrast to Adam’s severely Classical forms, is more akin to that of Chippen- 
dale which preceded it, by virtue of the curved lines of the various parts, such as the curved feet 
of the commodes, wardrobes, cabinets and the curved chair backs. The chairs have either square 
or round tapering legs, whereas the backs are made of bent bars, chiefly in oval or heart-shaped 
curves. A popular pattern consists of three interlaced ovals; another is three feathers (Prince of 
Wales feathers) in an oval frame. During the Hepplewhite period, English decorative furniture 
attains its culminating point in inventiveness in producing new designs for cupboards, tables and 
commodes. At this time wardrobes and book-cases consisting of two or three parts were made, 
as well as wardrobes with three or more drawers of the same length below and a cupboard above, 
and commodes with two doors in the middle and drawers at the sides. The delight of English 
cabinet-makers in delicate lattice and trellis work of rectangular and curved patterns is particularly 


34 





es eS a ae 2S 


ADAM, HEPPLEWHITE AND SHERATON 


noticeable in the glazed upper parts of the numerous book-cases consisting of one or several 
sections. The pediments of the writing bureaux, as compared with those of Chippendale, are 
flatter and ornamented with egg-shaped vases. Solid, dark, polished mahogany is the principal 
wood used. The doors of commodes and cupboards are often enriched with light inlay work of 
finely figured wood; chiefly satinwood. Large oval panels with ray patterns are usually inserted 
in the doors. 

Sheraton’s style is characterized by an absence of curved lines and the predominance of perfectly 
clear and constructional forms and details. The Cabinet Maker’s and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book, 
by Thomas Sheraton, published in 1791, had a decisive influence. Sheraton stands for extreme 
refinement, and this is indicated by his graceful cylinder writing-tables for ladies, dressing-tables, 
work-tables, card-tables and é¢fagéres. Much of the furniture made in those days became a per- 
manent feature in the middle-class houses of the 19th century. Sheraton furniture is in many 
ways exemplary to-day by reason of its utilitarian and straightforward construction. Smooth 
mahogany enlivened only by light inlaid banding determines the form fo a certain extent. Simple 
escutcheons cut out of metal sheets ornament the drawers. In 1802—1803 Sheraton published 
his work, The Cabinet Directory, containing an Explanation of all the Terms used in the Cabinet, 
Chair and Upholstery Branches. ... Sheraton, who devoted the last years of his life to writing 
books on furniture, died in 1804. For about twenty years after his death English domestic 
furniture drew its inspiration from the work done in the time of Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton. 
The last output of Sheraton’s work begins to show curved forms instead of straight lines, and 
this is still more the case with the furniture patterns of about 1810. The way is being prepared 
for the Early Victorian style. Decorative furniture was chiefly affected by the Empire style which 
had come from Paris in the meantime. 


55 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 
Late 18th-Century Furniture in Germany, Denmark and Italy — 


GERMAN decorative furniture was turned into the new channel of Early Classicism about 
1770 by Parisian and English influence. Furniture for the court adopted the straight lines and 
the expressive ornament of the Louis Seize style, together with the carved and stucco panelling. 
The castle of Benrath on the Rhine and the decoration and furniture in Bamberg Castle contain 
early examples. In addition to the French style, the ideas of Chambers and Adam obtained a 
footing in the Prince of Anhalt’s castles, built by Erdmannsdorf, an architect who had spent 
several years in England. The German cabinet-makers copied Louis Seize according to their 
own interpretation, as indicated by the South Germany veneered writing-cabinets, and the large 
double-doored hall cupboards, often ornamented with Louis Seize details and pediments. They 
are firmly established types, merely modified to suit the needs of the new style. The more 
elaborate pieces point to pronounced French influence. The best proofs of this influence are 
David Réntgen’s cupboards and tables made in Neuwied, and remarkable for their beautiful 
marquetery picture designs and light mahogany veneering with ormolu mounts. Réntgen’s 
writing-cabinets of the seventies are akin to those of the late Rococo period. Hereafter cylinder 
bureaux become popular. They were also made by Riesener and his Parisian contemporaries; 
but Réntgen’s work is superior because of the clearness of ifs plan, and the restraint that 
characterizes the supports and details of his pieces. He made writing-tables with tops, long-case 
clocks, tables, commodes and seats. His extensive influence and the number of his assistants— 
many of whom left him later to work independently—enabled Louis Seize forms to be spread in 
German cabinet-making as far as Berlin and Vienna. 

Berlin and Vienna were the outposts of classic decorative furniture in Germany at the end of 
the 18th century. About 1800, cabinet-makers became adepts in making household furniture 
of simple lines in mahogany, pear, ash and poplar. The influence of Hepplewhite and Sheraton 
on the middle-class furniture of Germany is undeniable. Ufilitarian and unornamented furniture 
with smooth veneering is now to be found in royal apartments, and also in the houses of merchants 
and traders, together with painted—and later, printed—wallpaper, calico, cretonne and horsehair 
coverings. 

Danish Louis Seize household furniture develops along similar lines. There, as in the Hanse 
Towns and Schleswig, the cupboards with upper parts and the chairs are marked by English 
features. In Sweden, Iversson’s furniture with its marquetery and bronze mountings may be 
regarded as a branch of the Parisian Louis Seize. 

In Italy, decorative furniture still retains ornamental tendencies. There Louis Seize appeared 
at an early date in the engraved designs of decoration and furniture by Piranesi and Guiseppe 
Soli. In the designs of Pergolesi and Abortolli it is found in a more mature phase. Italian 
craftsmen still give bolder contours to seats. Painting and gilding are sfill popular. Lacquered 
commodes were made in Northern Italy after about 1770. Italian Louis Seize in about 1800 has 
an individual expression in the commodes with inlays of light wood, made by Borabigio in Milan. 
Together with Venice, Milan is the centre of the Italian furniture industry at the end of the 
18th century. 





. 
: 
E 
. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 
The Empire Style 


BY Empire is understood, in the narrow sense of the word, that phase in household equipment 
and decorative furniture which began in Paris after the Revolution under the Directoire about 
1795, which developed under the Consulate, reached its culminating point under the First Empire 
of Napoleon (1804—1813), and lingered for at least another decade in the state apartments of the 
European courts. Empire style is at first and most perfectly expressed in the decoration and 
furnishing of the court apartments created in Paris for the First Consul who was afterwards 
Emperor. The designers of this furnishing were the architects Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine. 
They may be regarded as the founders of the Empire style. Their decoration and furnishing 
were enthusiastically imitated by the artists of all countries who had gathered in Paris at the 
beginning of the century, where life had become more brilliant than ever. Strangely enough, the 
European courts which had formerly imitated the styles of the French kings in their furniture, 
now copied the rooms and the decorative furniture of the great Corsican. 

Percier and Fontaine accelerated the spread of the new fashion by their book of engraved 
designs, Recueil de Oécorations interieures, published in 1801 and again in 1812. In Vienna, Berlin, 
Windsor, Madrid, Turin, Rome and St. Petersburg most of the castles and palaces were decorated 
soon after in Empire style. In Germany the most important examples of Empire work are in the 
castles of Stuttgart, Wiirzburg and Cassel, where Napoleon’s brother, Jéréme, introduced this 
style of furniture and decoration. 

The difference between Empire and Louis Seize decorative furniture is that the former trans- 
plants antique forms, particularly those of Rome, on to furniture without any modification. The 
columns, pilasters, consoles, cornices and friezes of antique architecture are employed for orna- 
menting the fronts of cupboards and commodes. And classic columns and such ornamental 
features as sphinxes, griffins and lions’ paws are used on chairs and tables. The empire cabinet- 
makers graft the carved and bronze moulded architectural details and plastic ornament on to 
their furniture without connecting them structurally, organically as if were, with the body and 
surface of the furniture. In this respect Empire is a retrogressive movement as compared with 
Louis Seize. Regarded superficially, it appears more harmonious than any other style because 
it transfers the Roman patterns to all branches of furnishing, even fo the silk coverings of the 
chairs, the silk panels of the walls, and the curtains and coverlets of beds. But this superficial 
harmony does not accord with the inspiration that moulded forms fo such gracious purpose in 
the styles obtaining fill the end of the 18th century. Commodes and cupboards now become 
rectangular; the surfaces are smooth and embellished with fire-gilt bronze decoration, severely 
symmetrical in ifs distribution. Instead of lively and graceful contours, furniture acquired per- 
fectly straight ouflines. The veneering of dark red polished mahogany, in striking contrast with 
the fire-gilt bronze ornament and gilt carvings, provides the keynote of the heavy, solemn colour- 
scheme which imposes its sombre character on the silk panelling and wallpaper of the Empire 
period. Inlay work begins to disappear, though the cabinet-makers take delight in using various 
coloured, grained and figured woods for the inner fitting of the writing-bureaux which were 
particularly popular in Germany. 

Court furniture, like the styles of the French kings, is mainly of a decorative nature. Even the 
royal bedrooms with their draperies and the high canopies of the monumental beds, gold inter- 
woven silk panelling, the pedestal bedside cupboards and the tripod washstands—based on 
antique models—and impressive cheval glasses and fire screens all look as if they were more for 


37 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


show than comfort—a characteristic of all royal apartments since the time of Louis XIV. But in 
the Empire style, with its almost pathetic and wholly theatrical apeing of Roman culture, the taste 
of the parvenu is proclaimed, which was something foreign to the spirit of 18th-century taste, but 
matched the ideas of those who creafed and imitated the style. From the cabinet-maker’s point 
of view the fechnique of the veneering and the treatment of the mahogany are admirable. In 
Paris and elsewhere it is easy to trace a direct connection between the tradition of the cabinef- 
makers of the Empire period and that of Louis Seize times. The most important proof of this is 
the firm of the cabinef-maker, Jacob Desmalter, which already existed in the Late Louis Seize 
period, and carried out the orders of Percier and Fontaine for the First Consul and later for the 
Emperor; a firm which also did work for foreign potentates as far as St. Petersburg. Another 
indication of the uninterrupted line of tradition is the work of the celebrated ciseleur, Thomire, 
who embellished furniture for Napoleon in Malmaison, Fontainebleau and Compiégne. 

The imposition of antique forms at the command of fashion does not curb the inventiveness of 
the cabinet-maker, who creates a number of new furniture types fo meet the practical require- 
ments of the age. Thus the Empire period produces new forms for broken-fronted book-cases 
with lattice work, and for glazed china cabinets. The narrow, open stands for china and port- 
folios of engravings, efc., narrow glass cabinets and round dumb-waiters, flower tables, and a 
variety of stands on which cups of tea or coffee might be set down, were introduced at this time: 
and if antique architectural forms are repeated almost ad nauseam in the console tables, mirror 
frames, and state and dining-tables, nevertheless the common sense of the cabinet-maker domi- 
nates in these utilitarian pieces. Together with the writing-bureau it is characteristic of the times 
that the piece to which special attention is devoted should be the pianoforte. Besides London, 
Vienna was a centre for piano-making since 1790, and competed with the former city in the pro- 
duction of decorative pianofortes. 

By its whole nature, Empire style is a fashion which undergoes little modification in any Euro- 
pean country. The difference between the court Empire furniture of Madrid or St. Petersburg 
is hardly noficeable. It is true that some traditional native peculiarities of 18th-century decoration 
and furniture were carried on into the Empire period. Thus Italian Empire, as represented in 
the designs of Guiseppe Soli and Giocondo Alberftolli, differs by virtue of its greater devotion to 
antique ornamental details from the English Empire as depicted in the designs of Thomas Hope’s 
Household Furniture (1807), and George Smith’s Collection of Designs for Furniture and Interior 
Decoration, which maintained a connection—if a somewhat loose one—with Late Sheraton style. 
Empire still lingers on in the royal palaces and castles after the fall of Napoleon, until as late 
as 1830. It is sufficient to mention the works of Schinkel in Berlin, Klenze in Munich, and the 
furniture in the castles of Cassel and St. Petersburg as monuments of Late Court Empire. 








CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 
The Last Phase of Decorative Furniture—The Biedermeier Style 


BIEDERMEIER, which is the last phase in the history of decorative furniture styles, lasts 
from after the Wars of Liberation (1815) till about the Revolution in 1848. This style received 
its most characteristic features in Germany and Austria. Household furniture of this period also 
developed to a certain degree of perfection in England, Denmark and Russia. 

The name Biedermeier was transferred from a political caricature in Fliegende Blatter to the 
household furniture of the Philistine middle-classes of the period of the Restoration, Reaction 
and the Holy Alliance. The sources of Biedermeier furniture may be found in the domestic 
furniture of the beginning of the 19th century, as it was developed in London, Berlin and Vienna. 
In those cities, domestic cabinet-making followed its own path through the storm and sfress of 
the Revolution and Wars of Liberation, independent of Court Empire. The distinguishing feature 
of Biedermeier, as compared with the Early Classic style (1800), is the preference for curved 
supports and chair backs, curved table legs, and turned supports in general, especially after 1830. 
Receptacles, such as cupboards and chests of drawers, are as plain as possible. The veneers 
most favoured apart from mahogany are light birch, grained ash, pear and cherry. The upholstery 
consists of horsehair, flowered calico and rep. The love of comfort is expressed in the sofa and 
couch, in the carved and rolled sides of which Biedermeier developed its ornament in ever- 
changing variations. Some of the most popular of these ornamental forms, which were mostly 
gilded, were swans with curved necks, cornucopie, $riffins and foliage. In the matter of gilded 
and carved ornament, Biedermeier shows itself to be influenced by Empire, which lingers on in 
court furniture till as late as 1830. 

The Biedermeier cabinet-makers were just as inventive where new types of furniture were con- 
cerned as their predecessors of the last quarter of the 18th century. England is the country 
where the growth of Biedermeier style from the previous period (circa 1800) may best be traced. 
Indeed, English middle-class domestic furniture, which was not directly affected by the upheavals 
of Napoleonic times, continued its course uninterrupted. The furniture designs in the most im- 
portant publication, The Repository of Arts, which appeared in London from 1808, are a con- 
tinuation of Sheraton’s later designs, as well as those of Hope and George Smith, and they show 
as the years go by the increased preference for the curved and turned forms of the Biedermeier 
period. 

English cabinef-makers revive Gothic earlier than any others, as, indeed, Chippendale and Sir 
William Chambers had already done in the 18th century; but the mahogany furniture of about 
1820, often over-elaborated with carved decoration, such as bookcases, sofas and pianofortes in 
neo-Gothic style, prove the decadence of taste when compared with the Gothic or Chinese furni- 
ture of Chippendale. Neo-Gothic furniture also appears early in Vienna, where Schloss Laxen- 
burg was furnished in this style. But what is admirable in Gothic Biedermeier is its delicate 
joinery and mahogany veneer, which distinguish it from the Gothic furniture of the second half 
of the 19th century with its hard, carved ornament glued on to the surfaces. 

The main features of the furnishing and decorating of a Biedermeier room are, first the wall- 
paper, introduced practically everywhere and either plain or printed with flower and festoon 
patterns, and then the draped curtains, the multi-coloured table-cloths and carpets. The love 
of flowers and plants is striking, and all sorts of stands, baskets and vases are made to accommo- 
date them. In Germany especially the writing-table and rectangular secrétaire were particularly 
prominent in the furnishing of an age that had a sentimental love of writing lengthy letters. 


59 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


Waste-paper baskets, glass cabinets, shelves and stands, work-tables, pier glasses, linen cupboards 
and wardrobes were made in those days on the plans that have been handed down fo our own 
times. The praiseworthy points about this household furniture of the first half of the 19th century 
are its utilitarian form, and its straightforward honest simplicity rather than the romantic and 
sentimental idea with which it is associated to-day. This explains the reawakened interest of our 
generation for this type of furniture which has been neglected and almost despised for two 
generations. Indeed, it has been condemned, for the term Biedermeier was one of mockery given 
to it by the following generation. 

In the Late Biedermeier period, there is a tendency fo enliven the plain furniture by richer 
ornament and more mobile contours. For this reason, nafuralistic flower patterns are introduced 
into the textiles that cover furniture, and Rococo scrollwork is introduced in the carving. The 
frames begin fo be more pronouncedly curved; the turned legs and profiles become more bombé. 
This tendency begins to show itself about 1830 in its early stages after the July Revolution in 
Paris. It becomes quite emphatic about 1840 and assumes much of the character of Rococo style 
and dominates decorative furniture until after the middle of the century. This is the Second 
Rococo period, the Neo-Rococo which is called Louis Philippe in France after the “Citizen King,” 
and in England, Early Victorian, after the young Queen. 

About the middle of the century the lavish and picturesque effect of the home is augmented by 
richly carved ornament, legs more pronounced in their curves, and above all by luxuriant velvet 
and plush upholstery for seats, together with flowered carpets, table-covers, curtains and dark-hued 
wallpaper. This style, which the French termed Second Empire or Napoleon III, in its last phase 
(as Napoleon, or rather the Empress Eugénie fostered it) practically disappears in 1870. It 
merged into the Neo-Renaissance which endeavoured to imitate the styles of the Renaissance 
epoch. A characteristic trait of the weakening of a genuine feeling for style, which began about 
1830 in the Late Biedermeier period, is the partial introduction of Oriental furniture and textiles. 
In those days, so-called Turkish rooms appeared: divans, carpets, and later Persian and Indian 
harems as smoking-rooms; nor were Chinese and Japanese rooms lacking eventually. It is true 
that in former centuries European decorative furniture was offen subjected to Oriental influence. 
Thus Italian and Spanish Renaissance inlay work was influenced by the Islamic sphere of art; 
Portuguese and Dutch furniture by India in the 17th century, and English in the first half of the 
18th century by China. But the essential fact is that these impressions were always assimilated 
by arfists possessed of a creative style, whereas the “Oriental” furnishing, decoration and ornament 
of the late 19th century, slavishly imitated the Oriental taste. The result was that they not only 
conveyed a wrong idea of Oriental culture, but encouraged Oriental craffsmen to manufacture 
bazaar rubbish. 


| 
| 
: 





CHAPTER TWENTY- SEVEN 
Eastern Furniture 


COMPARED with European decorative furniture of the past, that of the East falls far behind. The 
development of European home culture and decorative furniture, which advances uninterruptedly 
from the simplest forms to an ever-extending comprehensiveness and richness, cannot be expected 
with the peoples of Asia in view of their vastly different manner of living and divergent art concep- 
tions. This is not the place to discuss the customs which determine the household requirements 
and the furnishing needs of these peoples. Mention has already been made in Chapter One of 
their habit of sitting on the floor at meals and in company, a habit common to the whole of 
the eastern continent. Further important factors are the preference, owing to climatic conditions, 
for living out of doors, in the courts and gardens and in front of the houses; the lack of 
family life among the Islamic peoples; and then the attitude towards architecture, which 
differs fundamentally from the conceptions of Western civilization. Finally Oriental art differs 
from Western art by the predominating lack of perspective conception in decoration. Therefore 
Oriental furniture has always lacked the tectonic structure that is characteristic of European 
work. 

The dwellings of the Islamic peoples are so greatly dominated by fabric hangings and carpets 
that wooden furnifure is of little account. Certainly Persia, which since the Middle Ages was the 
leading country from an artistic point of view, has rich specimens of faience panellings and carpets 
dating as late as the 18th century, but the furniture that has been preserved is but scanty. The 
Persian miniatures depicting scenes of contemporary life explain this, for they show interiors which 
are only furnished with carpets, people sit on carpets at low, plain tables with food and drink. 
Such seats as there are consist of low flat socles. Only the divans (usually placed along the walls) 
and the beds rise a little higher over the floor. The Persian and Turkish furniture which mostly 
dates from the 17th and 18th centuries consists of low, polygonal little tables, boxes, small chests, 
writing boxes and cabinets, chiefly of hard wood and inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl in 
geometrical patterns. The Orient is the source of the ivory inlays of the North Italian and Spanish 
16th-century cabinets and other pieces of furniture. 

Indian furniture is connected with Persian, and until the 18th century there was very little. 
There, too, ivory and mother-of-pearl inlay was popular. During the Baroque period, ornamental 
flat carving in ivory and ebony flourished as well as turning. The influence of Indian 
furniture is met with in Portugal and Holland. In those days European furniture influenced that of 
India through the Dutch and Portuguese colonies, as was the case in Persia: Indo-Chinese furni- 
ture is an example of this. It consists chiefly of cabinets and chests, made of a frame with drawers 
and doors of hard, light wood inlaid with Chinese mother-of-pearl patterns. Later Indian 
decorative art, which is characterized by rich Baroque openwork carving, gives the impression 
of a style that has become rigid in a meaningless play of ornament. In the 19th century Indian 
decorative furniture is enlivened by English influence, of which the furniture in so-called “Bombay 
mosaic” geometrical star patterns is an example. 

The technique of working sandalwood, ebony, stained ivory and fin was introduced in the late 
18th century from Shiraz in Persia to Sindh, and from there to Bombay, where it is still practised, 
especially for Europe. In Persia as well as in India boxes and other receptacles with lacquer 
painting were made at a later period. They were mostly made of papier-m&ché and cardboard. 
In Persia they were painted with figures and in India chiefly with flowers, in the manner of those 
on Cashmere shawls. Cashmere together with Sindh were the chief centres of this industry. 


61 


THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FURNITURE 


Furniture-making developed to an art of some importance in Asia Minor and Egypt after the 
first centuries of Mohammedanism. It consisted of mosque furniture, which cannot be dealt 
with here as it belongs to church furnishing. The chief pieces are pulpits (mimbar), prayer niches 
(mihrab), wall cupboards, doors and Koran desks, Koran caskets and dish stands (kursi). The 
framework is joined in a masterly manner and in such a way that the surfaces are divided into 
small, richly carved panels to prevent warping owing to the hot climate. The flat pierced 
arabesque carving of the geometrical panels is just as masterly, and was later on enriched by mother- 
of-pearl and ivory inlays. The Egyptian Islamic turnery is remarkable for its perfection. It 
was specially employed for bay window trellis work in Cairo and for tomb railings (musharabieh). 

The furniture of the Far East, that of China and Japan, is more important than that of the Near 
East and India. The lasting influence which is exercised on European furniture during the 
Baroque period alone gives it a remarkable position. But there is no denying that, particularly 
in Japanese furniture of the 18th and 19th centuries, there are all sorts of features and qualities 
which may be usefully adopted in modern furniture. This applies especially to the light movable 
stands, receptacles and screens of all sorts. 

Chinese furniture only develops, at least so far as can be discovered, during the 16th and 17th 
centuries in the Ming period. The period which introduced coloured, painted Chinese porcelain 
to the Dutch and English in the 17th century is the first to give a clear idea of Chinese furniture. 
One cannot find such a variety of decorative furniture in China as in Central Europe. The simple 
mode of life and the prevalence of wooden architecture limited the possible development of 
furniture. Old Chinese pictures of the 17th and 18th centuries show us scenes of family and social 
life in which the people are usually squatting on the ground or sifting on low stools drinking their 
tea and eating from low tables. In the 17th century the tables, stools and vase stands are charac- 
terized by curved and scroll legs. The straight legs are bent inwards at the bottom; and between 
the legs and underframe, bent, crossed and frellis-like supports are often to be found. Etagéres 
for vases are also popular. These supports and lattice-work are a peculiar expression of that lack 
of structural ideas, in our sense of the term, from which Chinese cabinet-makers suffer. And 
it is an important fact that this Chinese manner of constructing furniture was a weighty factor in 
the transition of the severe Baroque to the more lively Rococo in European decorative furniture. 
The rare Chinese cupboards with two and four doors and chest-like boxes of the 16th century 
and later, are simply and plainly made with straight frames and large surfaces, uninterrupted by 
constructional features. We should remember here the important fact that all Chinese furniture 
is lacquered. This lacquer painting is the chief beauty and strongest feature of Chinese and 
Japanese furniture. The smooth cupboards and boxes are painted chiefly with landscapes and 
horsemen in gold on a black ground. Sometimes the brilliant effect is heightened by mother-of- 
pearl inlay. About 1700 flowers, large birds and rocks were added, especially in high relief work. 
The flat carved coloured lacquer work on Coromandel wood, dating from the end of the 17th 
century, is a special type of its own. Chinese lacquer furniture was in its most flourishing con- 
dition during the Ming and Kanghsi period (16th—-18th centuries). Red and brown lacquer 
furniture was also made. During the Chieng Lung period lacquer work flourishes once more 
and finally; and then the feeling for style slowly declines. The greatest number of cabinet 
cupboards was exported to Holland and England about 1700. 

Japanese furniture owes ifs character solely to lacquer work. The scanty receptacles, chiefly 
coffin-like pieces for arms, and writing boxes, are alone distinguished by their excellent lacquer 
work: for the rest, they lack plastic forms or profiles. Japanese lacquer may be traced back fo 


62 





EASTERN FURNITURE 


the earliest times of Japanese culture, that is, to the 8th and 10th centuries. But the furniture 
and boxes of this early period are almost exclusively in the temples as well as in the celebrated 
national sanctuary Nara and in the imperial palaces. The majority of Japanese lacquer furniture 
and utensils that have been preserved date, like those of China, from recent centuries; chiefly 
from the 17th and 18th. Japanese lacquer is characterized by inlay with gold specks, the so-called 
aventurine work, and by an unsurpassed polish. The motifs in the early periods are severely 
conventionalized weapons, rosettes and foliage ornament; later landscapes, peonies and birds are 
scattered over the surface, all more delicate in design and finer in relief and lacquer than Chinese 
lacquer furniture. Various stands for clothes and utensils, which can be taken apart and put 
away, are interesfing pieces of Japanese furniture. The delicacy of finer Japanese household uten- 
sils, of the boxes and chests, is augmented by rich silk cords and tassels by which they are often 
held together, as well as by gilt-bronze mounts. 


63 


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Egypt—Couches for the dead, 2nd cent. B.C. 





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fate SAL SOOARAELEE ES 


Telia 


r 


I RARLE 


2 
y 
e 
: 
f 
$ 
RA 








Throne, after an ivory relief 


- 10th cent.— 


8th 


Byzantine 


AS x WY 





Byzantine, 6th-10th cent.—Seats and Couches, after ivory reliefs 





euudary UL JUOIYT AIOAT—"}U99 YI9 ‘ueMOY ySeq 


i slibdididdibddldddr n 


- 





AMMA ALLS ALLA LALLA LN | 





ait 


tpbidddibs A 





auoIYT F4U0}G—"}U9d YITT-YIOT ‘FulzuezAg-oyeyy 





ee es 


ee 


<< 


. 


be: a ae 


4a 


a ee 


mm 


se 


ee 


£ 
i 
F 





, 8th cent. 


Coffer 


Italy (under Byzantine influence) — 


Pat’ 





Archiv ''Mas‘‘ Batcelona 


Romanesque, 12th~ 13th cent.—Church Bench from Spain 


mani tlt ete q 
Ee daa 
ae 





Seats after ivory, stone and wood sculptures 


Romanesque, 12th- 13th cent. 


Romanesque, 10th 





aE ees Oe aOR EA RO eT Oe 


and 12th-13th cent.—Seats and Couches, after ivory and stone sculptures 


29 


30 





Romanesque Cupboard with paintings, Germany, early 13th cent. 
Chest, Mediaeval form with Romanesque ornamental motifs, 15th cent. 


*» 


seth 


SOON ara RAR A 


Ae he ee i 
af é ? Z 


ae 
& 





Gable-Roofed Cupboards, Romanesque forms, Germany, 13th~-14th cent. 


Gable-Roofed Chests, 15th cent. 


NN 
ry 





Barcelona 


“*Mas’”’ 


Archiv 


“ddtheeents 


Spain 


Cupboard 


Romanesque — 


33 





celona 


Archiv ‘‘Mas’’ Bar 





Spain (above) and Germany 


’ 


iron mounts 


13th cent.—Chests with 


Romanesque, 


34 


Romanesque, 





13th cent.—Small Box 


with animal figures and interlaced pattern 


35 


geome $40 20 (GRRE et 


hemes ee poe 





Seats in Romanesque forms—Germany, 13th cent. and later 


36 


PLE ERG BERTI Ne et. 


al 
Hh 
% 
b | 
EAS 
4 
it 
3 
ay 





Seats in Romanesque forms from Norway 





Seats in Romanesque forms from Iceland and Norway 


SW 


AUOXPS IIMOT puke (IAOQR) Sdli}uUNOD auId[Y 34} WoO ‘WIJ [eAaLIpPaW ‘s}sayd URWIID 





39 


(Mo]2q) eIARPUIPUPIS 


‘ 


(asoqge) Auewsay pure sduerg— yuo UIGT YIP 


I “s}soqd) yeo d1Y}OL) Ayaeg 





40 





South France, 13th cent. 


’ 


Chair, Italy, 14th cent; Chest 


Early Gothic—Arm- 





Early Gothic—Priedieu, Germany, ca. 1300; Chest, France, 15th cent. 


41 


x 
—F 





15th cent 


’ 


fers 


Gothic Cof 


France — 








Gothic Coffers, 15th cent. 


France— 


44 





15th cent. 


ce— Gothic Coffer Fronts, 


Fran 





France— Details of Gothic Coffer Fronts, 15th cent. 


46 


wmey)-a1y pue piroqdny—d1y}045 “Judd YICT “‘g0uely 





AT 


SILTOSSIIGC] 


—1Y4}OH -4U99 YC] ‘9duely 





48 





A a a 


St AOE 


5k es 





France, 15th cent. Gothic—Church Bench 





France, 15th cent. Gothic—Church Bench 


49 


50 


aX 


4 


uf 





Flanders, 15th cent. Gothic ~ Arm-Chair and Cupboard 


51 


rey )-a1iy pue ye9IS yoinyd —I1YIO) yuo) YICT ‘spure[IaqiIN 





bh 


=a 





i 








Soomeanl 


El ace Be 


PPS 








lle 

\ * oo | 
Es er ~_ ya 

| 
ee ' 


jt 





{\ 








AN 
LV a) 


' 





Vim Riis 








Seat, right: Netherlands; 


stern Switzerland 


Coffer and Box 
Seat left: We 


Gothic, 15th cent 





Arxiv ‘‘Mas’’ Barcelona 


Gothic, 





15th cent.—Folding Chair, Spain, ca. 1400; Credence, Flanders 


nn 


wl 


of 


I 1 ni Al ‘ |S! . we) . S 


Pupey ‘usmney “[{ “youg 


PURER es en 
LLAMA Bs ii 


ohana: 


ied 
pn 
gi 

mrs “ 





S}SIYD—INYIOH “Jud YICT 


« 


uteds 


PUupep ‘ousro; ‘Ww }0ud 





56 





London 


Victoria and Albert Museum 


Standing Cupboard 


England, Gothic, middle of 16th cent 





Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Gothic, middle of 16th cent.— Standing Cupboard 


58 





London 


a and Albert Museum 


Victori 


England, Gothic, ca: 1500— Oak Chests 


Victoria and 


piss 


Lite 





Albert Museum, London 


England, Gothic— Credence, 15th cent.; Chest, early 16th cent. 


59 


60 


alae SOT 





Auewia9 YON wor sprrogdny— Qoc] ‘Bo ‘91YyY}0H ‘AurMIIH 








61 


Auewiay YIION woods spireoqdny yoinys) pue 9IUIPII7)— OOST 


"Pd D1YIOH 


‘Auewday 





62 





North Germany, Gothic, 2nd half of 15th cent.—Credence and Chest 




















North Germany, Late Gothic, early 16th cent. 
Cupboard and Chest with iron mounts 


64 


"JU99 YICT ‘S9pqey 214I0H azeT— Auewssy yNog pue puejpslaz}IMS 





yuaa yrCT Jo sley Puc 


‘ 


SoTqe]L ITYFO*L) aye T—Aurewisy YyyNos 





Sa 


66 


Judd YICT JO sey puz ‘spreoqgdny ds1y30H ayeT—Aurwiayg yyNoS 


4 


Wey ele 


wnuwinun 





67 


Juod YC, Jo pus ‘sprreoqdny JIY}OL) 94}e 


e 


YT—Auewssay yiNoS 





68 


ASP 
NAANY 





"yU99 YICT ‘preoqdns-[jeAy pue (6¢¢1) pzeOgdny Aq}saQ — I1Y}OD a}eT ‘SatizuNoy dsuldjy uewssay 


scores 


IN 


| 


A 


AN// 
SVD 


| 
WAS 











4 





69 


(1Z¢1) prveogdny AdjsaQ I1Y}OH 3} eT—SalijuNOD duidjy uewiay 


UU, 


mC 


\- 





70 





South Germany, Late Gothic, 15th cent.—Chest and Box-Settle 




















German Alpine Countries, Late Gothic, ca. 1500—Chests 


71 





preoqdn)-4stAN Pur peoispod = 00cT 


"BD ‘I1YIOH) 3}e7T ‘salqjunoy auldiy uewiiay 





iS) 


pareoqdny puvr 





489d 


Suiperay — 


*yU99 YIC1 “ITYIOL) ye 7T 








Fy 
\OArS 














« 


Salizunoy surdyy uremia 





74 


[OIA] WOIZ pRr}ISPIG—OOCT “PI ‘I1YIOH Ie T 


‘sotazuno’ auldjy uewisay 





V5 


4099. 046] 





‘ATeI] YIION “35294D pure e14eL — 0271 ‘Auewsayg yINos ‘pag —d!Y}OL) 9}eT 





76 





North Italy and Alpine Countries—Late Gothic Chests, end of 15th cent. 


19) 


SSRN 


e 























North Italy, Gothic, 15th cent.—Chest and Cupboard 


78 


one 


FO oe 
ie Pa Peo 
De ae Bee ee 


ie et ee 
$50 73> & > 


ae bos ee ad 
o> 





North Italy, Late Gothic, end of 15th cent.—Chests from Venice (above) 
and the Adige district 


79 


7, 
ot 
_ 


as 





Italy, Late Gothic, 15th cent.—Chests with gilt stucco ornament 


80 





Italy, Early Renaissance—Folding Chairs from Venice, Chest from the Adige district 


Italy, Early Renaissance— X-Chair, early 16th cent.; Painted Chest (Tuscany) 


81 





Re 


srerponpiAiaee: 


pean se 


EVAN IRIN 





Italy, Early Renaissance —Chests from Tuscany, 16th cent. 





LV PLS 


UVP UPPER ELC er ere ets 





sect RAEN HACE 








Italy, Early Renaissance —Box-Settles, Tuscany, 16th cent. 


83 


84 


aI[pe1D ‘saxog poajuleg [[euls ‘9dUapPIID ‘YIeY sayiO[D —‘}uad YO] ‘aduessieuay ‘A[e}] 





l 
» 
iy 
é 
3 


ee 








a a 


ibe tints ae 





85 


I[]qeL pue asduapaiyg [[rurg— ‘juss YyyOT ‘aduessieusy ‘AyeRY 


5 
3 
2 
$ 
3 


nas 


Ni : Be SN 
BLAS CAC RENERE LEAS LON AMAA eas : PARR RUBE AURiALA LALA Lata ia tiRtiatial 


ee Sage ce sccm ae 





86 





Italy, High Renaissance, 16th cent.—Tables 


Italy, High Renaissance, 16th cent.—Seats and Chest 


87 








Italy, High Renaissance, 16th cent.—Seats 


89 


i 


AERIS 


Oy , 


% 





Seats 


Italy, High Renaissance, 16th cent. 


90 


Italy, High Renaissance, 16th cent.—Tables 








hes ae ad Ha eA ee me ae ae Ha de ie fae a tae tes aes ae Oe ad fee te eta Us fe fae eB fe He Sm Be Be 8 be be te be be bie Bs 








Italy, High Renaissance, 16th cent.—Credences 


91 


pieoqgdny a[qnoq pure jaulqed-nesing—‘juad Yio] ‘aouessieuasy ysipy ‘Aypeqy 





93 


spreoqdny—‘}uU99 Y}OT ‘9dURSSIeUdY ysipy ‘Aypery 




















EGR, GING AD; 


rt PPP RRUUUUILUIUID way paste 
it 


os 





94 





Italy, High Renaissance, 16th cent.—Chests from Venice and Northern Italy 











Italy, Renaissance, 16th cent. 





— Chests 


95 


96 


Syoulqe7)-neosiIng —‘*}u9a5 qi9T 


‘gouessieuay ysipy ‘Alery 





Ss 
= 
aS 


uz 
‘77 


yy) 


me 


2. 


JY S11 


“ 


‘4 





uas YO] jo J[ePy puc ‘FJ2] “xneging 


Fae 


%. 


JD). 


yyy 


SullIA\ — dduessieudsy Yysiyy 


as 


~ABRPAS Seals 


Se 


“AT EH] 





98 


= Nee 


MAIOIOTATATRT ATS 


epee 4 , ¥ pass ILENE mi 
RE ERA AAR RR HR ADK R RK A Aga tA EPARRA BR AAA RA AS 


440 





Italy, Renaissance—Credence and lable from Bologna, about 1600 


9 9 








100 











Dressoir, about 1540 





France, Early Renaissance 


101 


leet alate eee 


ad 


| ARN Re ORR RITE LED SLANT IR Oe I me 
gsc a AGN ee en ey al te AL AE A EAA OT coe 
2. 





Dy) 


% 


S35 JE 


> 


2 


cos, 


+ 
\ 
SY 
x 
S 
4 
< 
< 
N 
< 
‘ 
’ 
AS 
Se 
a 
\ 
| 
< 


4 
ten, 
4 


a 





France, Early Renaissance, Ist half of 16th cent.—Dressoir 


102 





TIOSsSoIG] —°}U9d YIOT JO jjey ist ‘g0uessieuasy Ale “Qouvig 





103 


} 


=) 


ulged pue ileys 


—‘ju 


e) 


2 Yi9] jo yjey pu 


- 


c 


‘ 


aouessivudy ysiyy 


e 
g 
g 

A\ 
Al 
4| 


SESE 


tak 


duel y 


SAU 


whe ck, 1 





104 


Say AAD ye 


SUR IM or 9 A 


vod 
icp? 
D> rar’ 





France, Early Renaissance, 16th cent.—Chests 


105 





France, Early Renaissance Chest, ca. 1540; Folding Seat, 2nd half of loth cent. 


106 


syeag payxoeg-Yysip{— ‘uss YIOT JO JleYy puz ‘aduessivusy ysipy ‘aduriy 





107 


$}P9$ pa 


ye g-4YstH — 


"yUd) YIOT JO F[eY puz ‘aduessivudsy ysipy ‘9ouesy 


A ell od 8h Hb AN OANA Ny 











108 





France, High Renaissance, 2nd half of 16th cent.— lables 


109 





Tables 


2nd half of 16th cent 


France, High Renaissance, 


110 


25 oe 2s Ot SS ON eS oS 


ca 

. 
—— 
ete 
=, 


sileyd-Wiy—'}uUd) YIOT JO [eY puz ‘aduessieuay ysipy ‘aurry 





111 


ne 


Sa 


Early Renais 


France, Renaissance, 16th cent/— Chairs, left: Late Renaissance, right 











Tr 


rd aided aad 
Sa EC ee gry 


pe eat oe 


BA i god aA eke 


France, High Renaissance, 2nd half of 16th cent.—Cupboard with decorative carving 


ig) 








France, Late Renaissance, 16th cent.—Cabinet 


Lit 


sprreoqdny — ‘jugs YI9T jo Jiey 


puz ‘aouessieusy ysiy ‘gouely 


BARISTA NG AEE ANS AAG EAN SEERA INTE MS I CO BIS 
ed ; ate Pre eo ee adel 


a 


aa tine eaten cian 


id it sb, 


wh MES 4 GA YH SCH ie AN ARDS AM SGD 





115 


AP[UI I] qIeW YIM :3Y SII | 





ssuijured yum 


Wyo] ‘spareoqdny —aduessie 


udy ysiyy ‘gouely 


BOSH eee 7 a ee 





116 


i 
4 
: 
& 
« 





France, Early Renaissance, 16th cent.—Fourposter 





France, Late Renaissance, 16th cent.—Fourposter 


117 








Germany, Early Renaissance, 16th cent.— Folding Chairs and Shaped Chairs 
; from Southern Germany 


& 


119 


dugggaga 





Germany, Early Renaissance— Nuremberg Cupboard by Peter Flétner, ca. 1540 


120 





Germany, Renaissance, 16th cent.— Writing Desk, Central Germany, ca. 1554; 
Chest from Augsburg, ca. 1570 


Germany, Renais 





sance, end of 16th cent.—Chairs from Dresden, ca. 1590; 
Table from South Germany, ca. 1600 


bho 


NN 
“NN 








Fourposter 


South Germany, Late Renaissance, beginning of 17th cent. 





Germany, Renaissance—above: South German Trestle-table, late 16th cent.; 
below: Table with drawer from Franconia, 17th cent. 


1 


124 


OF “INYO edu 


9[tse7) Ulo}sua 1 uw ) 
PIPFH Olj yIUIpII7) —"}fUugad YI9T jo I]ppiu ‘g0ueSssieudsy “pue[laz}im 























ay 


125 


Re 


WEN 


¢ 


"Judd YIOT Jo 
AueWIID YNOS “FY4SII 'OGCT “BD ‘aye :352] 


« 


spivoqgdn7) aduessieuay 





126 








Inlaid Chest and Credence 


,2nd half of l6th cents 


ssance 


zerland, Renai 


Swit 





Renaissance—Folding Chairs from South Germany and Switzerland, first half of 17th cent. 


128 











middle of 16th cent.— Westphalian Dressoirs, 


’ 


orth Germany, Early Renaissance 
ca. 1550 (lower part missing); Rhenish Marriage Coffer 


N 


middle of 16th cent. 


’ 





North Germany, Early Renaissance—Cologne Dressoir, ca. 1540 


129 


130 





Cupboard Doors and 


beginning of 16th cent 
Balustrade Panelling 


’ 


Flemish Early Renaissance 


131 











’ 


<H 
SH 
Va) 
_— 
vo 
56) 
i=) 
en) 
fey. oc 
wy + 
“OG 
CB) 
came 
ods 
aot oS 
aS 
Cac} 
— 
sae Se 
av 
a5 
Os 
| 3 
CB) 
(oO Reel) 
(=f me} 
eo G 
n 3 
yn — 
ea 
so wo 
cr: 
maf 
tas 
wow 
co WH 
ea) 
i? a} 
o 
Ble, 
O 


North Germany, 


1 








North Germany, Renaissance—Chests; above: Bremen, after 1600; below: Liineburg, 


2nd half of 16th cent. 


fete 





North Germany, Renaissance —Oak Cupboard from the Swyn “Pesel“ in Lehe, 
Ditmarsh, 1568 


CA 


CA 


134 








North Germany, Renaissance—Bed with Canopy from the Swyn ‘‘Pesel“‘ in Lehe, 


Ditmarsh, 1568 


va) 
> 





’ 


Holstein 


Cupboard from Sleswig 


High Renaissance— 


North Germany, 


ca. 1580 


136 





Denmark, Late Renaissance —Oak Cupboard, beginning of 17th cent. 


N37 





Denmark, Late Renaissance— Oak Chests, beginning of 17th cent. 


138 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Renaissance—above: Late Gothic Sideboard Table (oak), ca. 1500; 
below: Writing-Desk (oak with coloured woods inlay), end 16th cent. 


159 























Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Renaissance— Cabinet with marquetry, 2nd half of loth cent. 


140 


sey — 


"JU9d YIOT ‘aduessieuay ‘puelsugq 


uopuoy ‘uinasnw yaqry pue elo}IA ‘JoYg 





141 


uopuoT ‘unasnw Weqry pue PLIOJIIA “JOU 





SIEYD —"}U39 YIOT ‘aouessieuay ‘puerlsugq 


= De Be Bude 


Marae” 








Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Late Renaissance—Bed with Tester (walnut), 1593 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Late Renaissance—Oak Court Cupboard, 1610 


144 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Late Renaissance, middle of 17th cent.— Box-Settle; Cradle, 
dated 1641 


145 





Phot.Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Late Renaissance, 17th cent.—Oak Table and Box Stools 


146 





London 


Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum 


k), 17th cent. 


Cabinet (0a 


England, Late Renaissance— 


147 











E 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Late Renaissance— Cabinet (walnut), middle of 17th cent. 


148 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Late Renaissance—Chairs and Table, oak, 17th cent. 


149 








Netherlands, Renaissance—Chairs and Bench, beginning of 17th cent. 


150 


bs Bebe eR s 


eeeeecensy: 


oe Te Ya 


> 32 


, i 


eee €€ €F z 





Netherlands, Late Renaissance—Chairs, EG Inga wee ile cent. 


ive 


ence asa AAR AI 





beginning of 17th cent. 


’ 


Netherlands, Renaissance—Bed with Tester 


yU99 YI] ‘sprveoqdny—aduessieuay aye 7 ‘spuerli1ayiaN 


a 


Ba >> P?> 
spy { 


ey 


é 


= 








we 


(iar a a as 
arrose 





eT i || mm 

















ick 


SWic 


Late Renaissance, 17th cent.—Dutch Room from Friedrichstadt in Sle 


154 


= ca nirrenisiremernven gen nant nee GE 
ae aed 
emer erp 


ene 


ee, 


ce FeRReECreeee 


AAA 


S 


z= 
PI MTT INT INT ITs 


LWPEPPDABPDPDPBEBWPDLDDIBY, 


4 
= 
Z 
2 
F 

3 
7 


MLEEDEPDPLBPPRDAVIPPIDL, < 


i 


EHS Hy 8) 
FWA 


Ye 


Ne ee ee ee 


AAA PLAID EEE AAPA AEE DEEL 


Aas 


TAA 


- 5 KERN AMERE SRS 
SEO i eae ett aah eee 


LL 


YUN 





Holland, Late Renaissance— Chests, 17th cent. 





Holland, Late Renaissance—Cupboard, 17th cent. 





155 


156 





Phot. M. Moreno, Madrid 


Spain, Renaissance, 16th cent.— Cabinet 


bS7 





Phot. M. Moreno, Madrid 


Spain, Renaissance, 6th cent.—Cupboard and Table 


| 
dt 


we a ci 


Phot. M. Moreno, 


ANS 


CHEESE OES if i 


SENS S 


~ 





4 


WAMSICTAAG 


pe 


RRR 


ee oe ct ect am aaa ag a ap 9 a Aa a a 





Madrid 


Spain, Renaissance, 16th cent.—Cupboard 


159 


7 ih th Regn lt i ts ie a al oe ine DT ie gl a ia %, aay 
eth syst Sac at sete Stace aga net Sac Teal Sd Nie? ag gd aad et ye 


hee tote te ta Tu Sie ba” 
. So Ga at Seat ft te Sule 


Fut atgtntal alata tut nha te ta ta lak g Gataewute Fite Ta Wome a tetat. 
sanieinint “tnmeinantnse ce iene seseronn tose enerereyrra ss 


CORSE ae ee ee ee 
5S Tee Sa Mh Nl or Se Se a ee be 


cnanermencgireereeth 
re ee Pade 4 ¥ MS 3 
Sata arenas | 1 eee 
E : 


ao 


ee eae serait 
er ee oy er 


aetaanarey 





Spain, Renaissance, 16th cent.—Chairs and Cabinet with ivory inlay 


160 


Fee 


ge 
Y 
y 
Y, 
y 


ww 





Phot. M. Moreno, Madrid 


‘Spain, Renaissance, 16th cent.—Cabinet (Varguenfio) 


161 


~ MMM LEM 


eer re ed 





a i i a a al a a 


Madrid 


Phot. M. Moreno, 


Cabinet (open) and Chairs 


16th cent.— 


Renaissance, 


iMiak. 


. 


Spa 





Spain, Late Renaissance, 17th cent.— Cabinet (open below), ebony with ivory 


163 


H 


Ps 
 « 
é 
Pali 
4 
A 
Z 
cA 
y 
4 
z 
cA 


& 





Archiv ’'Mas‘‘ Barcelona 


Spain, Renaissance, l6th-17th cent.—Cabinet in Italian Renaissance Style; 
below: small Box, wood and ivory 


164 


(444 


4 
FPEE Rett |g 


ii 
ei 
RCCL | 


(4444 


Tre rel 


AAA AAROE | | 


S80 RS il elie mata 





adrid 


Phot. M. Moreno, M 


Spain, Renaissance, 16th cent.—Cupboard 


165 


BERS keto d 





Phot. M. Moreno, Madrid 


Spain, Renaissance, 16th cent.—Cupboard 


166 


(paso]> pue uado) yaurqed — ‘3499 YF/T-YIOT ‘ad uessieusy ‘ureds 


eT oe 
PoP + 
Nace a 


i 2 a 





PHpry ‘ousow ‘W 304d 


167 


spreoqdny —"}uU99 YI/] JO jley 3s] ‘aduessieuasy ajyeq ‘uireds 


Dati 


l 


PHPeW ‘ouaroW "W doug 





168 


gee 


$e. 
TOR Pe man gt 


{| 
Ay 
ie 
Vy 





Archiv "’Mas‘‘ Barcelona 


Spain, Late Renaissance, 17th cent,— Chests 


1 od 


; 8 
é 


i 


PORVOO NE POT ™ “ 
tuasgi sg = ‘ Ja Sy 4 * 


Nz 


| 


= 
a PO 
za 


Se 


Gee 


Archiv '’Mas‘‘ Barcelona 


Spain, Late Renaissance, 17th cent.—Chest and Cabinet 





169 


170 


sg uh ahs al eb a a OSS ee 2 eo ET eh ee 
‘ Sstsaiel ~S My 
¥ POR ID PARA AR A AN A AR A AR oR RR 
bales een eal ann 
Sean tedl “e 
id 
we 
we 
—— 
ite 
v ot it i at ded 8 8 
SLT OL I | 





Phot. M. Moreno, Madrid 


Spain, Late Renaissance, 2nd half of 16th cent.— Chairs 


171 





Archiv '’Mas‘‘ Barcelona 


Spain, Baroque, ca. 1700—Seat with leather coverings and Leather Coffer 


172 


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Phot. J. Laurent, Madrid 


Part of a Bedstead, wood and bronze 


17th cent. 


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Spain, Late Renaissance 


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Archiy ''Mas‘' Barcelona 


Spain, Baroque, 17th cent.— Fourposter 


174 


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Archiy ’’Mas‘‘ Barcelona 


Spain, Late Baroque, 18th cent.— Chairs 


175 


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176 


Phot. M. Moreno, Madrid 


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Spain, Baroque, 17th cent.—Cabinet 


Sa aa se 





177 


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Phot. M. Moreno, Madrid 


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sawenea 


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Phot. J, Laurent, Madrid 


Spain, Baroque, 17th cent.—Cabinet (opened) and Table 


178 





Flanders, Baroque, 17th cent.—Chairs 


179 


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180 





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181 


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182 


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184 





France, Baroque (Louis XIV.), ca. 1700—Commodes in the Style of Boulle 


185 








France, Baroque—Above Table de luxe, ca. 1700, and Writing-Table 
in the style of Bérain, ca. 1710 


186 





France, Baroque (Louis XIV.)—Fire Screen and Arm-Chair, ca. 1710 


187 


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188 





France, Baroque (Louis XIV.)—State Bed, end of 17th cent, 


189 





Italy, Baroque, ca. 1700—Ornate Florentine Cabinet 


190 





Italy, Baroque ca. 1720—Stool and Arm-Chair 


1 





Elaborately carved Cupboard 


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Baroque 


Italy, 


192 





Italy, Baroque ca. 1720—Arm-Chairs (left, from Venice) 


195 


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194 


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South German Cupboards 


Germany, Baroque, end of 17th cent. 


at cet mh * 
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lett) Cabinet on stand; right. Cupboard, Bale, 1605 


Germany, Baroque, end Ole thecent: 


196 





Germany, Baroque, ca. 1700—Hamburg, Hall Cupboard 


7 


19 





South German Cupboard, ca. 1670 


Germany, Baroque 


198 





Phot. Muller, Nurnberg 


Germany, Baroque, ca. 1700—South German Tables 


19) 





Germany, Baroque, ca. 1700—Tables from Danzig and Liubeck 


200 





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203 


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Germany, Baroque, end of 17th cent.— Chairs 





204 





Berlin caa700m 


, 


Germany, Baroque—Elaborately carved Tables 





Phot. Staatl. Bildstelle, Berlin 


Germany, Baroque— Writing-Table and Table with lacquer decoration, 
Berlin, ca. 1700 


206 








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207 


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208 


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209 


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210 


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Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Baroque (Charles II.), ca. 1680—Lacquer Cabinet 


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Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, Baroque (Queen Anne) ca. 1700—Chests on stand inlaid with marquetry 


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Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, beginning of the 18th cent. — 
Long-Case Clock with lacquer decoration 


217. 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, early 18th cent.— Writing-Cabinet with lacquer decoration 


218 





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219 


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Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, middle of 18th cent.—Hanging Cupboard. 
in Chinese Chippendale style 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, middle of 18th cent.—Bed, Chinese Chippendale style 


i) 
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224 


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Regence Bookcase by Cressent 


middle of 18th cent. — 


’ 


France 


and Rococo Commode 


France, Louis 


XV., 





middle of 18th cent.—Writing-Table and Commode 


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France, Louis XV., middle of 18th cent. —Writing-Table and Commode 


Erance: 





Louis XV., middle of 18th cent.—Settee and Sofa 


230 


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Phot. Stoedtner, Berlin 


SSO RP SBOP LILO 





France, Louis XV., middle of 18th cent.—Commode 





Wallace Collection, London 


France, Louis XV., middle of 18th cent.— Corner Cupboard with lacquer decoration 


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236 





Germany, Iransitional style, ca. 1720—South German Console Tables 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—Settee and Chairs 


oy! 


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259 


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4 


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240 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—Frederick the Great's tortoiseshell 


Bookshelf and Writing-Table 


241 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—Commodes from the castles of Potsdam 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.— Table with small cabinet 
superimposed, and upholstered seat, from the castles of Potsdam 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—South German Cabinet and Commode 


244 


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Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—Sofa and Arm-Chairs from Potsdam 


i) 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—~Commode and decorative Furniture 
from Schonbrunn Castle, near Vienna 


46 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—Hamburg Commode, 
West German Chairs 





Germany, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—North German Chairs 
and Triple Chair-Back Settee 


248 


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Holland, Ist half of 18th cent.—Cabinet of coloured woods in the Chinese style 





Holland, Rococo, middle of 18th cent.— China Cabinet 


a8) 





Rococo Cabinet from Lima (Peru) — Spanish Colonial style, 
2nd half of 18thcent: 


2D) 





Archiv '’Mas‘‘ Barcelona 








Rococo, middle of 18th cent.—Settee from Spain, and Commodes from Liege 


ry 
‘ 
ri 


esencerett 





Colonial Furniture from Cape Town (above) and North America— Middle 


of 18th cent. 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, 2nd half of 18th cent.—Chairs in Chippendale style 
(below left, Windsor type) 


258 


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260 





France, Louis XVI. ca. 1780—Commodes 


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France, Louis XVI., ca. 1780—Commodes (top one by Riesener) 


61 


262 


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263 


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France, Louis XVI. ca. 1780—Console Tables, Chair and Writing-Table 


265 


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France, Louis XVI, ca. 1780-1790— Sideboard and Commode 


266 





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267 


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268 


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269 


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270 


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Germany, Early Classicism, ca. 1790—Writing-Table and Chest of Drawers 





Germany, Early Classicism, ca. 1790—Writing- Tables 


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Germany, Early Classicism, ca. 1790—Settee and Chairs with painted frames 


YOR 


Aa; 


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‘fee r OR 


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Dee eemnee 


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Germany, Early Classicism, ca. 1790— Upholstered Seats 


SAIN NNR NNN 





Italy, Early Classicism, end of 18th cent. —Settee and Commode with lacquer painting 








a xd4 ies 


Se 








AAAuKEES 


Italy, Early Classic 


i 





ARAAALH 





sm, end of 18th cent.—Chairs and Dressing-Table 


tf 





Italy, Early Classicism, end of 18th cent.—Seats and Commode 


aw 


ek ie 


Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 





England, ca. 1770—Furniture in Adam Style 


80 





England, end of 18th cent.—Sideboard and Table in Adam Style 


England) endioftl&th cent: 





— Table and Sideboard 


81 


282 





England, end of 18th cent.— Bookcase 




















Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, late 18th cent.—Long Case Clock, Bureau Bookcase and Side-Table 





83 


284 





Phot. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 


England, ca. 1800—Lady’s Dressing-Iable 


© A RA SL 
smi rt 6 


ASSETS SE Pea gee SPEED 





England, ca, 1790—Chairs, Sheraton and Hepplewhite Style 


86 


MOUSE 


BEREEONS LATELY 


i : 


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t 


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French Writing-Cab 


’ 


Empire, ca. 1800—Settee (Denmark) 


287 


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sate é (Fal 











288 


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289 


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90 








Empire, ca. 1800—Chairs 














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France, Empire, ca. 1800— Decorative Table and Chest of Drawers 


ot 


292 


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293 


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294 


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Germany, Empire, ca. 1810—Bedroom in Wurzburg Castle 


‘Resa stear abe cane 


ieilieantienareecaed 





Russia, Empire, ca. 1810—Living Room in Tsarskoe Selo Castle 


bo 


an 


Germany, Empire, 


Ca. 





1810— Bedstead, Chair and Bedside-Table 


297 


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Germany—Berlin Empire Furniture, ca. 1810 


298 


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299 


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300 


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wangpase 








301 


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Par ok: 


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302 





Germany, “Biedermeier’, ca. 1830—Chair, Sewing-Tables and Paper Basket 


eevecesse YY 





Germany, “Biedermeier’, ca. 1820—Sofas 


03 


304 


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306 


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Germany, lst half of 19th cent.—Couch and Settee 


THE NEAR EAST 


AND 


EE EARS EAS P 


308 


MELEE! 81h 


I I OH. 


SEZ 


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Islamic, Turkey, 18th cent.— Koran Desk 


309 





k 


Koran Des 


Egypt— 


ier 


Islam 


510 


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‘gouan{juy dIqeiy dapun uenjdisy 





311 


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ra ee 





515 


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YIZT ‘eu 


I 


Gh, 





314 





China—Lacquer Cabinet, 18thcent.; Indo-China— Cabinet, 18th cent. 


315 





China— Chairs, 18th cent.; Table Frame, 17th cent. 


316 








NERA SOOROOESIEO. 


Se een ene ne enn rosea scanaeaomenpiaanmnnciiaies = idan oe 
a AT A SN + LK AL <A + + A ASE RR «SAR - CA «<< 








Japan, Mediaeval— Boards for Games and Tables 


317 





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GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 
NK 2270 E56 1926 BKS } ; “) : 
¢. 1 Schmitz, Hermann, 18 | yi i 
The encyclopaedia of furniture : an outl | : eg SRE tory so 


INU 


3 3125 00361 8010 


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